


I Think I Love You

by youmakemesoangry



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Pining, Truth Spells, listen len just loves barry a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-01-20 02:22:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12423090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youmakemesoangry/pseuds/youmakemesoangry
Summary: Len is a simple man.A simple man who is, despite his best intentions, complicatedly in love with Barry Allen.His only saving grace is that Barry will never have to know.Right?





	1. Chapter 1

Len is a simple man. 

Ok, well. No. He isn’t. 

Len is a supremely complicated man. 

He does simple like a ballerina does graceless. He likes his plans complicated and his back up plans even more so. He likes the things he steals to be expensive as hell and nearly impossible to get to. He does the Saturday crossword. In pen. 

He’d rather cut off his hand again than have his job be easy. He lives for the complications and the way they make his brain work, running through problems and finding solutions. 

That being said, he keeps his love life very simple. He fucks people who want to fuck him back. He doesn’t fuck anyone in his current, or possible future, crews. He doesn’t fuck when he’s on a job. He doesn’t fuck anyone who is more likely to kill him in the morning than kick him out. After an awkward morning after, he no longer fucks anyone who has been within touching distance of his sister for more than a few reasons. 

He only fucks. He doesn’t do relationships and he sure as hell doesn’t fall in love. 

When he stares down the train aisle at The Flash, getting a good look at the man for the first time, his dick says ‘yes please’. 

His brain puts a stop to that shit immediately, seeing The Flash as a threat to his rules. 

Simple. 

He has a new toy; a new problem to figure out. That was enough.

Then he kidnaps the good Dr. Snow and sees the loyalty, the fierce protectiveness she has for The Flash. Then they go toe to toe in the street and the kid is _smart._

Quick as a whip and all that.

He kidnaps the Ramon brothers and sees the same loyalty in Cisco’s eyes. He sees, clearly, the pain it causes the scientist to choose between the health and safety of his own flesh and blood and the secret identity of _Barry Allen._

Knowing the hero’s name wasn’t important. 

He knew that. 

And he can say it was all for leverage all he wants but seeing the fierce, dangerous, _kind_ face beneath the cowl was the real prize. 

It was all decidedly less simple. 

He knows he's letting this get complicated. He knows it like he knows when Mick was faking his anger and he knows it like _Alexa_. 

So when Barry comes to him in Saints & Sinners, well. He needs to get more solid footing before it's too late and Barry looks just as good out of the suit as in it so he knew he had to work quick. 

And call him crazy but unlawful imprisonment never sat particularly well with him. 

The betrayal on Barry’s face is good. Simple. It creates distance and as he kneels down by where Barry is sprawled deliciously on the pavement, he’s reminding himself how bad of an idea this feeling in his chest is as much as he’s reminding Barry that he’s _a criminal and a liar and he hurts people and he robs them._

Barry saves his sister’s life and watches as he murders his own father and Barry takes the cold gun gently from his hands. He visits Len in prison and his disappointment makes something in Len's chest ache horribly, worse than watching his bastard of a father try to breathe around the icicle in his chest. 

When Mardon breaks him and that creepy uncle no one ever wanted to invite to Thanksgiving out of prison, he wants to see his sister. Then he wants to see Barry. He stops himself from doing either. The police are probably tailing his sister and Barry, well. He’s trying to keep away from the complication, he tells himself. 

He lasts only a few hours before he’s breaking into the West house and complicating his own life even more. 

He watches the way Barry’s face goes from a gentle smile to fury. His voice goes from soft and comforting to hard and in a moment he’s pressed against the fireplace with the long, hot line of Barry against his front. He reaches for his gun moments later, only really an afterthought to keep appearances but _fuck_ it’s almost worth the risk of getting thrown back into prison just to feel the brief press of their hips and to see Barry’s beautiful eyes up close. 

He gets to take a trip on a time machine and Barry comes and finds him and he says he’ll walk if Barry doesn't explain himself but it hurts just to look away from him. They get the Dominator’s crystal that will help save Barry’s pretty fiancée and Barry doesn’t let him get eaten by a shark. He lets himself touch Barry, briefly, and feels thrilled that Barry neither flinches nor pulls back. Len turns and walks back onto the Waverider and then. 

Then, Len dies. 

Well, he stops existing for awhile. He ranks it as being less fun than killing his father and more fun than losing a hand. 

He floats for a bit and then he’s waking up in the Waverider infirmary and has barely opened his eyes before Mick gives him a black eye and he knows they’re okay. 

Sara gives him Indian burn and he doesn’t really know what it means or how to feel about it but if having Lisa as a sister has taught him anything it means she’s happy he’s alive. 

They take a break in Central City. Having Len become part of time and the universe and then regaining a human form warrants a vacation, he guesses. 

He goes to see Lisa and gets backhanded across the face so, yeah. Confirmed as to mean she’s happy he wasn’t actually dead. 

He’s sitting in a safehouse, sans cold gun of course, and thinking of Barry. Would Barry be happy that the cold gun was destroyed? Does Barry miss their fights as much as he does? Does he miss their tête-à-têtes like Len does?

Mick throws a wrench in his general direction and tells him to “go fuck the kid or somethin’, Len. Jesus. Givin’ me agita over here with how seriously you’re thinkin’.”

So he leaves. He doesn’t go to Barry’s right away, though. Mostly because Len has been away for awhile and he doesn’t even know if Barry is still living with Detective West. 

He isn’t, Len finds out days later. He has a nice apartment that is warm and inviting with clearly feminine touches and he makes himself comfortable on the couch. He can feel his stomach tighten in anticipation, waiting for Barry to come home from work. 

His heart starts to pound when he hears the key in the lock. 

Len hates it. 

No he doesn’t. 

He loves it. He loves how Barry makes him nervous like the teenager he never really was. He loves the look of surprise and then relief on Barry’s face. 

He loves how complicated this has become and he loves how much he knows this going to hurt.

And it is going to hurt. Looking at Barry’s beautiful face as he smiles and says his name, he knows this might just kill him. 

And he loves how worth it it is, just to have that gorgeous smile aimed at him. 

It’s just that simple.


	2. Chapter 2

“I never thought the day would come where I’d think ‘I’m glad Leonard Snart is sitting on my couch’. You could have called or waited, you know?” The look on Barry’s face says he doesn’t really mind having Len in his apartment, despite the fact that he clearly broke in. 

God, he’s missed this idiot. 

“I have a reputation to keep,” he says with a shrug. “I can’t have people thinking that just because I was gone on a trip with a bunch of do-gooders, that doesn’t mean that I’m not still The Flash’s favorite villain.” He has to strain his neck to see where Barry is behind the couch and he can feel his lips twitch up slightly when Barry moves so he doesn’t have to. 

Barry’s smile dims slightly as he sits in the chair perpendicular to Len. 

It’s still the most beautiful smile Len has ever seen. 

“I heard you did more than just ‘go on a trip’, Snart.” Len looks away and focuses on looking at the different pictures in frames around the room. He stands and walks over to see a few ones on the mantle closer. 

He shrugs and simply says, “When in Rome” and he doesn’t need to be looking at Barry to know he’s frowning. 

“Was it worth it?” Len can feel his shoulders tense and knows Barry can see how still he gets. 

He knows how Barry means the question. He isn’t questioning Len’s decision or judging his apparent lack of self-worth. He isn’t even asking whether or not Len did it to be a hero. 

He’s asking because he genuinely wants to know. God knows the kid has done it himself enough times. 

He rubs at the ache in his chest at that thought and forces his shoulders to relax. 

“You tell me, Barry.” He turns bodily back to face Barry in time to see the slump of his shoulders and the tensing of his mouth. He hums in reply to that clear, nonverbal answer. 

He lets himself really look at Barry now. He looks...older. He looks aged and stressed and Len is unfortunately aware of what has caused that. 

“How’s little ol’ Team Flash doing these days?” Barry doesn’t look worse off for Len asking the question, but he does sigh and lean back in the chair as if all of this would be easier if he could just be laying down. 

“We’re down a few more members than I’d like, but,” he shrugs but Len can see how bitter the smile he puts on is. “What can you do, huh?”

They both know exactly what could be done. They both know how to go back and change it all and how it _never works_. 

Barry is looking down and away from Len now and he just wants to walk over and make that tenseness go away, wants to smooth out those wrinkles that shouldn’t be there. He doesn’t reign in that thought as quickly as he normally would, it having been too long since he’s had to deal with the thoughts _and_ the physical presence of Barry. 

He wants to move slowly over to where Barry is sitting. He’d stay standing because he thinks that if Barry sees him as so little a threat now that he would find Len’s height over him a comfort. He wants to gently run his fingers through Barry’s hair feel if it’s as soft as it looks or if Barry’s hair products make it hard.

He wants to cup that same hand around behind Barry’s head and use his thumb to tilt Barry’s head back slightly, just enough so he could meet Len’s eyes. And he would meet Len’s eyes, always so ready to learn and understand. 

He wants to brush his thumb across Barry’s cheek and under his eye, feeling the soft skin there and smoothing out the bags and wrinkles. 

He wants to put his other hand in the same position on the other side, framing Barry’s face, and press that thumb against the soft lips. Maybe he’d be lucky enough to get Barry to part his mouth slightly, maybe get a peek at that tongue as it automatically comes out to lick at Len’s thumb. 

He wants and he wants and he _wants_. 

He hears the front door open and feels his hands clench in guilt before he even looks up to see Iris closing the door. He forces himself to relax and lean against the mantle, making his face blank before he forces his eyes away from Barry’s face, making sure there is no evidence of him wanting her fiancé. 

She looks just as shocked as Barry had, but definitely not as relieved. He sees Barry move to get up and go greet her out of the corner of his eye and forces his eyes to not reflexively look over at the motion. He couldn’t bear to see the happiness not aimed at him. Never will be aimed at him. 

He resists the urge to rub at the pain in his chest again. 

His gaze remains locked on Iris’ face, checking for any distress as Barry reaches her and tugs her into a hug. Her eyes close in the hug and remain closed as Barry pulls back just to lean in to give her a lingering but simple kiss in greeting. 

They’re beautiful together and it hurts just like he thought it would. 

“Barry, honey. Why is Captain Cold alive and in our living room?” Barry steps back from her and rubs the back of his ducked head, sheepish. 

Cute. 

“Well, you know. Time is funny like that?” Len can’t see Barry’s face, but he can sure see the unamused look Iris shoots Barry. 

He pushes off of the mantle and moves, slow and lazy, towards the couple. 

“The problem with fighting the very fabric of time, Miss West, is that when it dramatically rips your atoms to shreds and scatters you through time and space, well.” He makes a point of looking around the room and making lazy motions with his hands, trying to avoid letting Iris’ journalist eyes see anything he doesn’t want her to. “It doesn’t always stick.” Barry is watching him now and it makes Len unnecessarily nervous. 

“Well, it doesn’t look like you got out completely unscathed.” She moves towards him and gestures at his face with one delicate hand where he knows there are a few bruises from how much his friends and family missed him. 

“Not all of us get such warm welcomes when we come home, Miss West.” His eyes briefly flick over to where Barry is watching the two of them, probably out of concern with how close Iris is now to Len. 

Iris gets a look in her eyes that Len can only identify as mischievous before she closes the space between them and wraps her arms around his waist and puts her head on his chest. 

“Thank you for saving us from having our fates controlled by ego-crazed time masters by blowing yourself and them up with the pure energy of time.” His hands are hovering awkwardly over her shoulders and he’s tensed in panic. Her arms are gentle but firm and she clearly isn’t letting go anytime soon. He gently wraps his arms around her shoulders and hopes he isn’t squeezing her too hard. 

To say it’s been awhile since the last time someone has touched him gently, let alone hugged him, would be an understatement. He hasn’t even hugged Lisa since they were kids. 

He looks at Barry and can see him laughing to himself, probably at Len’s completely baffled expression. 

“Um. It’s okay?” She’s clearly doing this as a joke but she still manages to come across as seriously thankful. He’s awkward in the face of her sincerity and doesn’t relax until she pulls away and takes a step back. She has a smile on her face that she’s clearly trying to make seem grateful but instead, she is far too amused by his reaction. 

Barry snickers behind her and Len can see how well they work together. They’re both genuine, annoyingly good, and brilliant smartasses. He wants to hate Iris, desperately, but just can’t bring himself to. 

He does hate the way Barry looks at her and the way he gravitates towards her once she backs away from Len. He kisses the side of Iris’ head and her amused smile fades into something soft and lovestruck. She pats Barry’s hands where they rest on her shoulders before turning and walking towards the kitchen. 

“Are you staying for dinner, Snart?” He’s caught in watching Barry watch her walk away and doesn’t process the question until Barry turns to look at him in question. 

“I actually must be going. As much as I would love to.” He wouldn’t. He couldn’t think of anything worse than watching the soon to be newlyweds make dinner together and then sitting with them. “People to rob, liquor stores to knock over. Crime never sleeps, Miss West.” He straightens his trench coat from where it had shifted from the sitting and the _hugging_. 

Barry snorts and he can hear Iris’ amused huff as he walks by the kitchen towards Barry. Barry walks to the door to open it and leans against the door jam when Len brushes past him into the hall. He shivers at the feel of Barry’s sweater against his coat and hates himself for it. 

“How long are you in Central for? Or, how long in _this_ central?” Len lets his lips curl up slightly before turning around to face Barry. 

“Another two weeks, unless some speedster decides to destroy the timeline randomly. Or we do. Whichever happens first.” He nonchalantly shrugs but is amused at Barry’s blush. 

“I’ll try to keep time together for the next few weeks. Give you guys a break.” He straightens from his slouch against the door jam and Len hates how much he loves how Barry is slightly taller than him. 

“Be seeing you, Flash.” He taps his finger against his nose and lets himself fully smile as Barry rolls his eyes and smiles back. 

He walks down the hall and doesn’t look back. Keeps walking until he hears the door snick shut when he’s at the elevator. He presses his hands against the wall above the buttons and lets his head hang between his shoulders. 

He lets out a shaky breath and he realizes his heart is pounding. He takes a few deep breaths and lets them out nice and slow before he stands back up. He fixes his coat again and presses the down button. 

There’s no more ‘might’ about it. 

This _will_ kill him. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ouch?  
> poor Len  
> he feels so much and shows so little
> 
> Yes this is absolutely inspired by I Think I Love You by The Partridge Family because I love the idea of sarcastic, funny, seriously unserious Captain Cold sitting up in the middle of the night and realizing that he loves Barry  
> And then having to blurt it out to him  
> I have an insane weakness for Truth spell/serum fics so....I'm trying it for once
> 
> Also, listen. I love Iris. This is not a fic that will bad mouth her or anything because she's amazing and beautiful.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please notice that I changed the warning! There will be violence and mentions of violence. This chapter specifically has some things that may be considered triggering.  
> Please see the end for warnings!

He should have known, really.

He should have known that jinxing them all by hoping out loud that nothing crazy would happen was just too much for his shitty luck to resist.

He’s frozen in the middle of a sip when he sees it, beer bottle raised to his lips, watching the news. His phone starts ringing thirty seconds into the news segment. He doesn’t even bother looking at the caller I.D., nor does he bother with a greeting.

“Two weeks, Flash. I very kindly asked for two weeks. I got three days.” There’s silence except for the crackling of the phone line. Then there is a soft sigh.

“I know, Snart. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask, but-“

“This isn’t exactly a normal gig to call me on. Whoever it is is not something to steal, nor do I think you want them dead.” There’s silence again and he glances across the room where Mick has stopped cleaning the heat gun to stare at him. Mick lifts an eyebrow at him and he scowls in response, turning his gaze back to the news.

“This is a hero’s job, Snart. Not as great as it seems, I’m sorry to say.” The sarcasm makes the corner of his mouth twitch, endlessly charmed by Barry, and he knows he’s going to help.

Hell, he knew when his phone rang. Doesn’t hurt to keep up an image, though.

“Well it’s a good thing I’m not planning to start playing hero any time soon.” That gets him identical snorts from Barry and Mick and he wants to be more annoyed than he is, but he can’t seem to find it in him.

“It’s not playing anymore, Snart. Not after all the good you’ve done.” The honest sincerity that Barry easily shifts into makes something in his stomach squirm and he’s left feeling supremely unbalanced.

Barry lets the silence hang in between them, probably making sure his words sink in. Len squeezes his eyes tight for a few moments, trying to gather himself together.

Damn this kid. And damn everything he does to Len. He takes a deep breath, letting it out slow, and opens his eyes. He can see Mick watching him from the corner of his vision but ignores him for now.

“Like I said, kid. When in Rome. I’m highly adaptable, as you know.”

“When in Rome stops being an excuse when you save your friend’s life and free humanity from being tugged around on strings like puppets.” It must be a hero thing to let silences hang, to let your poignant words sink in, because Barry is very good at it. Len wishes he knew what to say that wouldn’t sound like as much of a deflection as it would be.

“We’ll brief you when you get here.” He pulls the phone away from his ear to stare at the blinking end time. He tries not to smile at being hung up on by The Flash.

Even that small amount of rudeness charms him, and that thought wipes the smile away quick enough. He pushes off of the couch and makes his way into the kitchen, sighing as he dumps the rest of his beer in the sink. He watches as it foams and turns on the water to wash it away.

“He does know you don’t have your gun anymore, right?” Len sighs and turns around, walking past Mick to put the now empty bottle in their recycling bin.

“I’m sure Ramon has been notified of it’s passing. I assume Flash knows as well.” He continues into one of the bedrooms, the one he took as his when they first took this place as a safe house.

He pulls open his closet door, already fighting the urge to wear the parka. It’s clearly useless now, but it made him feel better. Protected. Whatever.

He sighs when he hears Mick’s boots stop by his doorway.

“So. What’s the plan, boss?” Mick’s voice would be considered flat to anyone else who didn’t know him. Len could hear the teasing lilt and he already knows this whole thing is going to end with Len having a migraine, _at least._

“We go to the labs. We get briefed on what the meta is. We hear Team Flash’s plan. We scrap Team Flash’s plan and I figure out what we actually should do.” He closes his closet door and moves to his drawers instead, pulling out jeans and a long sleeve.

“No. What’s the _plan_ , boss?” He hears Mick move through the muffling of the sleep shirt he’s taking off. Once he’s free, he doesn’t look at Mick. Just pulls on the long sleeve. He’s reaching for the jeans before he answers.

“I don’t know what you mean, Mick.” He finally looks up while he’s dropping his sweatpants and he fucking hates the way Mick’s body language can tell him just exactly what he means. 

“What I mean, Snart, is that I know you got your rules. You got everything planned and everything has a damn category. I know how you are, Snart. And I know when you wanna fuck someone.” Len rolls his eyes and tugs on his jeans. He’s sliding a belt through the loops of his jeans when he hears Mick move again.

He’s got his arms crossed and has widened his stance and Len gets…not noticeably nervous, but internally. He’s known Mick for longer than most of his current acquaintances have been alive and he knows when Mick isn’t about to let something go.

“I also know when you’re fucking yourself over because you can’t get out of your damn big head.” Damn it. He’d been hoping to avoid this conversation for, well. Forever, preferably.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Mick.” He’s tempted to push past Mick, but knows that without an actual fight, Mick wasn’t going to move until this was over.

“I want to talk about this as much as you do.” Which is not at all, as they both know. Feelings aren’t exactly their area of expertise. “So. What’s the plan?” He lets his eyes drop to the ground but keeps his head tilted up. He can feel himself start to scowl and he sort of wants to punch Mick just to get them both out of this. 

“The plan, Mick?” He makes the ‘ck’ come out as harsh as he feels it should, hoping his clear displeasure would make this go quicker, and he snaps his gaze back up to meet Mick’s unflinching one. “The plan is to go help the little nerd squad and get back to vacation before we have to get back on the fucking tin can deathtrap we’re calling home nowadays.”

There are plenty of downsides to having a friend, a partner, for nearly thirty years. One of them is that they don’t react to your intimidation the way other people do. Another is that they don’t fall for your shit.

“Oh yeah? How easy it gonna be for you to get back on the ship when you can’t stop mooning over boy wonder long enough to get your own head outta your ass?” He can feel his shoulders pull up with tension and he finally takes a chance to shove past Mick. Thankfully Mick lets him, rocking back slightly with the force of Len hitting shoulders with him, but he follows after Len.

“I don’t _moon,_ Mick, and I sure as hell don’t moon over the damn Flash.” He yanks his leather jacket off the back of a chair and heads to the safe behind the T.V. He hears Mick snort as kneels down and turns the knob.

“Yea, ok. You’re not moonin’ over the Flash and I’m Marie Antoinette.” He gets the safe open and turns to look at Mick over his shoulder briefly.

“Well, Mick. I always thought you’d look hot in a dress.” He grabs his Beretta and Mick’s heat gun before closing the door and standing back up. He holds Mick’s gun out to him, ignoring the pissed off pinch of his mouth and tucking his gun against his lower back.

He pulls his keys out of his jacket pocket and walks out the front door into the hall, trusting Mick to lock the door behind him.

The drive over is quiet, which isn’t unusual, but he can tell Mick is annoyed with him.

What the hell does Mick think? That Len is just going to get on his knees and confess his feelings to Barry? And that Barry will just leave his fiancée for Len?

And it’s not like he _loves_ the kid. Len rolls his eyes but doesn’t say anything, just gets out of the car when he parks outside of STAR Labs.

“Just hope you figure out what you’re doin’, Snart.” Mick’s voice is quiet behind him and Len has to roll his shoulders to stop them from gathering tension the way they want to. He hears Team Flash before he sees them and it brings a slight smile to his face. He’s somehow found two loudmouthed teams after being surrounded by silent criminals his whole life.

“It’s a good name! You’re just jealous that I came up with it first!” He turns the corner into the cortex to see Cisco pointing a finger aggressively at Doctor Snow. 

“The Compeller isn’t exactly the coolest sounding name, Cisco.” Snow rolls her eyes and turns away from Cisco’s theatrics, crossing her arms. Len glances at Mick and they raise their eyebrows at each other.

“Alright then. You come up with a better one!” Snow huffs at Cisco and Len smirks at how she clearly has no response for Cisco. 

“Guys, please. The name really isn’t the important part right now.” Barry walks out from one of the side labs, eyes closed and rubbing at his forehead in annoyance.

“How dare you. How very much dare you.” Before Cisco can really get started, Len takes a step forward and clears his throat.

“As much fun as this is to watch.” That gets all three of them to jump and he smirks, extremely satisfied at still being able to get the jump on them. Cisco looks between Len and Mick before whipping around to look at Barry.

“You invited the Rogues?!” Barry shrugs, but at least has the decency to look chastised. “I have Captain Cold and Heatwave in _my_ lab. Why? How many more Rogues are coming? Are you inviting any other villain groups to have a party here?” Len rolls his eyes at that and is deeply satisfied when he sees Barry do the same. “And since when is it okay for Heatwave to see your face? He doesn’t know who are you!” Cisco’s voice is starting to get shrill and he can see Mick start to smirk.

“We were on a time traveling ship with a group of people who are all friends with the Flash. Plus, the Flash is notoriously good at messing up the time line.” Mick’s smirk turns into a grin. “I know who Barry Allen is, kid.”

“See? You need to chill out, Ramon,” he drawls, moving further into the room, Mick moving out the walk along the outside. 

“We need their help, Cisco. And besides. They’re Legends now, not Rogues.” The way Barry looks at him, eyes hopeful and soft, stops whatever ‘I’m still a villain’ speech he would normally say in it’s tracks. He ignores the look Mick gives him from across the room.

“Yea, I’ll believe it when I see it.” Cisco ducks his head and mumbles, so Len can’t resist the urge to get close to him and smirk at him, leaning back and sitting his ass on the console.

“Well, start believing, Ramon.” He opens his arms wide, making Cisco flinch slightly. “‘Cause we’re here to help your little team.” He hears Barry sigh exasperatedly from behind him.

“Snart. Stop antagonizing Cisco.” He doesn’t turn around, but he tilts his back slightly and keeps his eyes looking down for a few moments.

“Hm. Fine. I’ll play _nice._ ” He pushes off of the control panel and takes a few steps away before turning around, allowing for him to see the whole cortex. “So. Team _Flash._ What can we assist you with today?” Cisco looks like he’s about to have an aneurism and Barry looks like this is all causing him a giant headache, but thankfully Snow takes the reigns. She seems to make herself taller instead of shrinking in the face of the two men who kidnapped her and Len appreciates her tenacity. 

“The new meta. She’s using her powers to get people to do what she wants.” She hits a few buttons on the console and pulls up the news footage detailing two recent bank robberies. “According to the victims,” Len doesn’t look away from the footage of the two men waving guns around, “she walked up to them and grabbed their wrist, which matches the burn marks found on them. She didn’t say anything to them, but then they had the overwhelming need to go rob a bank.” Len goes to the console to watch the video while Mick goes to the big T.V.s. There’s something off about the way that the men are doing it. They have no routine. Only one person each. Only a pistol. It’s wrong. It’s-

“They don’t know what the hell they’re doing.” Len looks up at Mick’s back in shock and then back down to the videos. Yes. That’s it. He’s not used to seeing such _amateurs_ attempt to rob a bank

“Most people don’t know how to rob a bank, Rory.” Mick turns to look at Cisco and Len is surprised the poor kid doesn’t squeak with the way he immediately tenses.

“Clearly, kid.” Mick looks back up at the screens and gestures at them. “These men don’t know how to hold their guns, they don’t know how to control a crowd. They don’t know to take out the ink pack. They don’t notice the teller pressing the panic button.”

“That’s a good thing, though. They were caught and though they’re still in holding, they’ll probably be released.” Len stops the videos and looks at Snow.

“It’s good for you. It’s good for Team Flash and the bank and the CCPD. You know who it isn’t good for?” He looks at Barry and watches as he rubs both hands down his face, keeping his hands by his mouth, and sighing.

“The meta.” His voice is muffled behind his hands but it’s clear he gets it. Len wishes he didn’t feel a spike of pride at that. 

“Exactly. What good are two botched robberies to this woman? She gets nothing. This wasn’t about the money, its-“

“She’s testing her powers. She’s finding limits.” Cisco looks up at him, eyes wide. Len nods and crosses his arms.

“Well.” Snow moves back next to the console and Len moves out of her way. “That explains this morning, then.” She brings up what looks like police reports. Barry steps further into the center of the room, taking over.

“A body was found this morning. A woman was found in her home, same burn marks on her wrist.” He hesitates and takes a deep breath before continuing. “I’m the CSI assigned to the case, so um. Just. Here are the pictures I took of the body. They’re a little…gruesome.” Len raises an eyebrow at that, but dutifully looks at the screen while Snow taps at the console.

Six photos are pulled up. The first two are of the full body, taken from slightly further away to capture the positioning. The woman is kneeling in front of a coffee table with her head resting on it, tilted to the side. One of her hands is hanging down, but the left one is on the coffee table next to her face and holding something.

The next four are, well. Len has seen a lot as a criminal, and a hell of a lot more as a Legend. This will be one of the things he wishes he never saw.

The first of the four is a close up of her right hand, nails torn and bloody, blood dripping onto the hardwood floor.

The next one is of her left hand and what’s in it. Len could have gone his whole life not knowing what a melon baller looks like when it’s filled with blood and skin. And what blood and skin looks like when it’s been melon balled.

The third picture is of her left temple. Or, what is left of it. She had dug all the way to the delicate bone of her temple.

The last picture has someone else’s hands, probably another CSI’s, holding her head up. The right side of her head is scratched all to hell. The skin looks like a wild animal went after it, but at least there’s no exposed bone.

Len feels nauseous. Cisco and Snow look nauseous. Barry’s mouth is set in a grim line and Len has a very strong feeling that this isn’t the worst thing Barry has seen as a CSI.

“She, um. She seems to have clawed at her own head until she realized that that wouldn’t work. We found blood in the kitchen where she got the melon baller from. And then she. She gauged out her skin and muscle until she could get to her temple and then slammed the melon baller into her temple until it cracked under the sharp edge of it.” The lab is completely dead silent except for the whirring of machinery and Len wishes there was something else to pay attention to other than Barry’s flat, serious, clinical voice and the pictures of a woman who beat herself to death.

“The blunt force caused her brain to bleed.” Snow’s voice is quiet and solemn and why the _hell_ are they here. This isn’t what Mick and Len signed up for. God dammit. “It’s called a Traumatic Subarachnoid Hemorrhage. She would have lost consciousness at least once. If she had gotten help, she might have survived, but. She would have been brain dead, or she would have died within the next month or so.”

There’s a very long silence while everyone tries to wrap their heads around what the hell all of that means.

“What the fuck made her do this?” Mick’s voice is quiet but not soft. He’s quiet like how the world gets quiet before the roll of thunder. Len almost feels bad for this meta.

Almost.

“It’s hard to know?” Cisco talks slow and looks like he regrets speaking the second Mick and Len turn their heads to stare at him. “What I mean is we have a lot of ideas _why_ , just no proof. It could be that the meta was too strong and it, essentially, overloaded this woman’s brain. Or…”

“Spit it out, Ramon.” He wants to sit down. He feels weirdly light headed and _horrified_.

“We think she may have tried to fight against the meta’s control.” Len turns his gaze to Barry and doesn’t know whether to be impressed or concerned that Barry is clearly the most put together out all of them. He’s clearly upset, like he would be with any death. That damn bleeding heart of his. But he doesn’t look like he’s going to tip over or crawl into a bottle like the rest of them do.

“She did this to herself because she said _no_?” Barry shrugs at Len and Len really wants to throttle this meta.

“It’s the theory we’re working with for right now.” Barry nods at Snow and she taps on the console until the monitors turn off finally. Mick turns back around to face the room and Len knows that look very well. He probably has it on too. He’s _furious._ Len takes a few deep breaths and tries to think rationally, tries to push away the pictures that are burned onto his corneas and the woman.

“This is a little above our pay grade, Barry.” He doesn’t mean for his voice to come out as soft as it does but he can’t help it, not wanting to break the delicate quietness of the lab.

“We need your help, Snart. Please.” Barry pleading sends a shiver down his spine and he quickly turns his head away to stare at the ground far away from Barry. “This meta’s a criminal and we need you to find out what anyone knows. We need people who are known for working with metas.” He looks across the room to Mick even though he already knows what they’re answer is. Mick looks away towards Barry and nods.

“Yea, Red. We’ll help.”

There’s a tension in Len’s shoulders that he’s sure is in Mick’s as well.

Helping people. Saving time. Saving _each other_. Now this?

Soft. They’ve gone soft.

His shoulders relax after he thinks about it. 

Thinks about those pictures.

 

Maybe soft isn’t so bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are mentions/descriptions of forced extreme self-mutilation and subsequent death which may be considered suicide.  
> It is a bit gruesome so please be warned.
> 
> If you need to skip that section, it starts after Caitlin says "Well"..."That explains this morning, then." and ends when Mick says "What the fuck made her do this?"
> 
>  
> 
> If you want to know but can't read it:
> 
> Essentially,  
> a woman is forced to cause herself head trauma until she dies


	4. Chapter 4

“Ok.” Cisco claps his hands once, effectively ending the silence in the lab as well as making Snow jump. “Here is what we have on The Compeller.” He picks up a tablet and swipes, pulling up a grainy image and a police report.

“We’re not calling her that, Cisco.”

“Oh hush, Snow. You know you love it.” Mick clears his throat and raises an eyebrow at the two, making them both duck their heads like scolded children. It makes Len smile.

“One of the guys described her as being around 5’6”, athletic build, long brown hair. The other victim said the same thing, but she must have gotten in this guy’s face. He described her as having “intense, green eyes”.” Len internally rolls his eyes at the way he could hear Barry making air quotes. “He said she wore some makeup, so distinguishing facial marks is probably out.”

“You just described most of the lady criminals we know.” Barry flounders a little at Mick, making a mess of gestures that seemed to amalgamate into a shrug. “You basically just described Lisa, Red. Got anything better than that?” Barry opened his mouth just to close it again and sigh.

“They’re keeping it out of the papers, but, um.” Cisco looks down at his tablet to read off the description. “The first guy didn’t get a good look at her, but he did look down at her hand when she grabbed him. He said she had “branch-like burns” on her hand and up her forearm.” Barry walks over to Cisco and leans over his shoulder to read the report, chewing on a thumbnail.

“Lichtenberg figure?” Snow turns her head in surprise towards Mick. “Aw. Don’t be so surprised, Doc. I do love a good burn.” She huffs and turns away from him with a flick of her hair. Mick looks over to Len and waggles an eyebrow, making Len huff. He gives Mick a flat look back before turning back to the conversation.

“So she got hit by lightning? So what?” Cisco hums in response, concentrating on whatever he had on his tablet.

“I got hit by lightning. So did she and she’s a meta but not a speedster? It doesn’t make sense.” Cisco points something out to Barry, stopping him from continuing.

Snow moves around the console to the T.V.s, her heels clicking, but Barry and Cisco don’t look up from the nonverbal conversation they’re having.

“What if she wasn’t actually _hit._ ” Barry and Cisco immediately look up at Snow.

“Shit.” Cisco lunges at the console, nearly slamming his tablet down, to furiously start typing at it. Len moves behind him to look over his shoulder, but all he sees are different medical journals and articles. Cisco pulls up around six, sharing the first one on the T.V.

“Only 10% of people who get struck by lightning die. It seriously messes up your insides, but you’ll live. You’re even _more_ likely to survive if lightning strikes _near_ you.” He pulls up pictures of sand that’s been struck by lightning and turned into glass. “You could stand right next to that,” and flails a hand at the picture, “and probably just walk away with all your hair on end and a belief in the almighty.” They’re all looking at him, blank expressions on their faces.

“How the hell does that help us, Ramon.” Len can feel his hands starting to clench and focuses on forcing them to relax.

“It doesn’t. It absolutely doesn’t. We won’t have a record of her if she never actually got struck.” Len rubs at his forehead and briefly wishes he could hit Cisco.

He _knew_ that this would give him a migraine. He sighs. This is what he gets for letting himself get killed. Being a hero is too much fucking work.

“So Snart and I go to ground, see what we can find out.” Mick shrugs his shoulders and looks far more relaxed than Len does. Probably because their version of ‘going to ground’ is sitting at different bars, drinking and waiting for some dumbass, wet behind the ears, wannabe criminal to brag about knowing so-and-so and talking to a lot of bartenders.

Mick loves it.

It makes Len break out in hives.

Cisco claps once, loud in the silence, and walks towards the lab behind where Mick is standing.

“Awesome! ‘Cause I have some ideas about what-“

“I don’t really care about your ideas, little man.” Their voices start to trail off as Mick follows Cisco into the other room, despite his words. Snow pics up Cisco’s discarded tablet, mumbling to herself. Something about cell damage. She heads into the lab on the opposite side of where Cisco and Mick went.

Len walks looks down at the console and briefly scans through the different articles and journals. They still don’t know what actually happened to her, so it can’t hurt to know at least what lightning could do to a person. He scans through two and closes the other ones when he starts to read the same information over again.

He wishes he didn’t.

Those _damn_ pictures are still there. He leans against the console and feels his face twisting with some emotion, something he can’t place. Disgust? Hatred? Sympathy? All three? He doesn’t want to look too far into it.

He tries to ignore that he can still feel Barry’s presence behind him.

“Her name was Rebecca.” Barry’s voice is soft and Len feels his shoulders hunch up further, almost to his ears now. “Her boyfriend was in Star City for business. He said she never called to say goodnight but figured she had just fallen asleep watching T.V. like she normally-“

“Stop.” He barely recognizes his own voice. It’s rough and quiet and he’s not sure Barry hears it at first but he does. He does and he stops and Len can’t bear to turn the slight amount it would take to see Barry’s face. Can’t look away from the pictures. He clears his throat. “You don’t need to humanize her. We already said we’d help.”

He hears the rustle of fabric and he sees Barry press his hands to the console like Len, leaning his weight on them and letting his head hang in-between his shoulders. Len gets himself together enough to pull his eyes away from the T.V.s to look at Barry’s profile. He watches the way Barry’s chest expands as he takes a deep breath and lets it out with a sigh. Barry’s eyes are closed and this close Len can see the way his eyelashes brush his cheeks. He looks forward again.

Dammit.

Barry raises his head and opens his eyes, but still doesn’t talk for a few moments.

“I’m not trying to humanize her to you, Snart.” His name doesn’t sound so harsh when Barry says it in the same soft tone he used before. “You don’t need me to. I saw your face. Rory’s face.” Len doesn’t know how to feel about that, exactly. How closely was Barry watching him? Or does Barry just know him that well now?

He turns his head and locks eyes with Barry and who knew eyes could look that sad?

“I just thought you might want to know who you’re fighting for.” Len feels his lips pinch a little at that and taps on the console until the pictures go away before pushing up off of it.

He wants to say that he’s not fighting for her, that he’s fighting because he wants to, because it’s what he’s good at. But he can’t. 

Fucking Barry and his sad eyes and his good heart. That’s why he’s doing this. Because there’s only so many times those sincere eyes can look at you before you start to _want_ to care about other people like that.

He heads towards the lab that Cisco and Mick disappeared into and pretends to not hear Barry following him.

“I’m just saying that sometimes a nicer attitude—put that down!” Mick holds the clearly expensive equipment he was fiddling with above his head as Cisco swipes for it, an eyebrow raised at Cisco who is trying to, with some measure of dignity, jump and grab it.

“Glad to see that this is what Team Flash does instead of working.” Cisco whips around to glare at Len, making his lips want to twitch up in amusement at the annoyed expression.

“I’ll have you know, _Captain Cold_ , that we are very professional around here.” Barry snorts behind him and Cisco moves his annoyed expression to just over Len’s right shoulder.

“Not really going to be able to keep your lovely little nickname, Ramon.” He wanders around the lab, looking at all of Cisco’s science toys and actual toys. “No cold gun, no Cold.” He keeps his voice nonchalant, but he does a feel slight loss. That gun was his ultimate weapon. It made him competition for the Flash. It made him enough of a _hero_ to be invited on Rip’s little time mission.

“Believe me, Snart, I know. I miss her like a limb.” Len snorts at Cisco’s dramatics but doesn’t face the room, still taking his time to observe the room.

“Blame Raymond. Couldn’t just let himself get blown up like a _real_ hero.” He lets his voice get even more nasally, sarcasm coming out thick. He hears Mick grunt and a noise of triumph from Cisco. He turns to see Mick bent in half, holding his stomach, and Cisco hurrying away with his equipment. 

He pretends not to notice the look Barry is drilling into the side of his face.

“What we were discussing, before Rory stopped keeping his hands to himself,” a huff from Mick in response, “is about whether or not this is technically a conflict of interest.”

Len finds himself picking up one of Cisco’s toys and twirling it around in his hand.

“I don’t think I understand what you mean, Ramon.” Cisco doesn’t look towards him, busy fiddling with the equipment.

“I mean, with you guys being criminals and all. Now you’ll be hunting down a criminal.” Len tilts his head back slightly, eyes still locked on the toy in his hand.

“I think I should be insulted by the fact that you’re comparing Mick and me to a woman who Shanghais’ people into crimes or else they…end themselves.” He stops fiddling and locks eyes with Cisco when he looks up from the equipment. Cisco looks shocked and then he gets this far away look.

“We’re not calling her The Shanghaier.” The faraway look in Cisco’s eyes disappears as he turns and glares at Barry.

“None of you appreciate me.”

“Well, with that.” Len puts his hands in his jacket pockets. “We have to go trick criminals into revealing all their secrets to us. Gentlemen.” He tips a fake hat before turning and leaving. He expects to hear Mick’s boots behind him, but instead hears the scuffing of sneakers as Barry falls into line next to him.

“You know that’s a limited edition X-Men figurine, right?” Len debates pretending not to know what Barry is talking about. He fiddles with Cisco’s toy, now in his pocket. He hums instead.

“Lisa’s been trying to find one on eBay for awhile.” Barry snorts and flashes away. 

Len lets himself smile until he hears Mick’s boots behind him. His smile falls as Mick takes Barry’s place at his side.

“Don’t.” Mick only hums in response. It’s a smug sound and it makes Len grit his teeth.

They manage to make it to the car in silence, until the car doors slam shut.

“Why don’t you smile like that at me, boss?”

Len wishes he had the room to fucking deck Mick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this one is super information heavy, but I wanted to start giving a basic description of what the meta look like and how she does what she does.


	5. Chapter 5

So the plan is simple.

They’re going to go bar hopping. 

That’s it.

Mick is nearly beside himself. Len is less enthused.

“Aww, c’mon Snart. Lighten up a little. We’ll get to drink _and_ work.” Len rolls his eye which earns him a backhanded slap against his chest before Mick walks to sit down on the couch. “How ‘bout this. We get into a few fights, let people know we’re back. We’ll have assholes falling over themselves to tell us useless shit. Boom. Easy.”

He isn’t wrong.

Nothing draws attention to you like a fight, and criminals are the worst kind of gossips. By the end of the night, they’ll have had a couple dozen guys lean casually against the bar where they’re drinking and tell them about so-and-so running a job here, and so-and-so hired someone to do it.

Boom. Easy.

He pulls out his phone and scrolls through his contacts before hitting call and puts the phone to his ear.

“Who you callin’?” He holds a finger up in a gesture to wait and Mick huffs in response.

The ringing stops.

“Leonard.” He feels his lips curl up slightly.

“Sara.” Mick perks up, lips twitching slightly at the corners.

“We bringin’ Blondie in? You really aimin’ to distract, Snart.” Len rolls his eyes.

“Tell Mick to go fuck himself.” He tilts the phone slightly away from his mouth to relay the message. It only makes Mick laugh, big and loud, which makes Sara huff a little in amusement. “What do you want, Leonard? We’re still on vacation so if you’re calling me to let you take the jump-ship to steal ‘Little Bastard’ or something I’m going to have to give you a solid no.” He feels his lips purse in amusement and not a little bit of deviousness.

“Now, Sara. Do you really think I’d call you _before_ I stole something?” Sara sighs and Len can almost feel her eye roll from here.

“What is it, Leonard?”

“How free are you tonight to go bar-hopping?” He hears the shifting of clothes over the line and pictures Sara sitting back in her chair.

“I’m on vacation.”

“That’s not a no.” She sighs roughly and Len smirks, very clearly picturing how Sara’s eyes are probably closed as she rubs at her forehead. “I can guarantee that there’ll be bar fights.”

“What the hell have you two gotten into that requires my help while we’re on _vacation_.” He looks at Mick who raises an eyebrow back before smirking.

“We’re….” He pauses, knowing very well how telling Sara about this could backfire on him spectacularly. He sighs. “We’re helping Team Flash.”

There’s quiet over the line.

“You’re what?” She sounds like she’s barely holding in her laughter.

“We’re helping Team Flash try and take down a meta.” She lets it out, pulling the phone away so he can only hear her laughing faintly.

“Jesus, you’ve got it bad.” He glares at Mick who just looks steadily back. If Mick said something to Sara, Len’s going to strangle him.

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” She lets out a few chuckles before sighing.

“Oh, nothing Leonard. Send the kid to come get me in 20. Tell him I’ll be with Oliver.” She hangs up. Are all heroes this rude and he just never noticed?

“She comin’?” He stops glaring at his phone and puts it down on the kitchen counter before nodding.

“Yeah. I’ll send Barry to get her so she doesn’t have to make the trip.” He heads to his room to change into a jacket with a wider range of motion before coming back out into the kitchen. He hears Mick push up off the couch as he grabs an apple from the fruit bowl and washes it off. He turns around and leans back against the counter before biting down and thinking about how they should go about this.

“Don’t strain somethin’, bud.” Len rolls his eyes. “Seriously. You’re overplannin’. Don’t try and force it. We’re just going to the bar to grab a few drinks. Whatever else happens,” Mick’s eyes glint as he smirks, “happens. We go in there lookin’ like we’re fishin’, we ain’t gonna catch anything.”

Len looks at Mick before taking a harsh bite of his apple which makes Mick smirk more. 

He hates when Mick is right. _Especially_ when it comes to planning.

“I see your point,” he says slowly, hating to acquiesce. 

“Yeah, yeah. We both know I’m the brains of this operation. Now finish your damn apple so we can go.” Len shrugs but takes a few more big bites before throwing the core in the garbage and grabbing his phone on his way to the door. He hears Mick grab the car keys so he walks out into the hall first. He turns his head briefly to watch Mick lock the door before they both head to the car.

As Mick drives, Len unlocks his phone and brings up his messages, only to stare at his phone until it goes black again. He rolls his eyes at himself for acting like a school girl who is too nervous to text her crush. He unlocks his phone again and shoots out a message to Barry just as they’re pulling up to Saints & Sinners. When they get out of the car, Len leads the way into the alleyway. They only have to wait for another minute or so before a flash of yellow lightning and a blast of wind flies into the alley.

Len feels his breath catch before forcing away any other reaction or surprise or otherwise.

Just because Barry is a wonder to look at, wrapped up in his tight suit as he is, doesn’t mean that Len has to go around acting and looking like an idiot.

Barry puts Sara down in front of them and she only briefly looks unsteady before she gets her footing and takes in her surroundings.

“Well. I sure am glad that the Waverider doesn’t feel like that.” She fixes her hair and straightens her clothing. Barry’s expression under the mask is a beautiful mix of bashfulness and smugness as he rubs the back of his neck and shrugs.

“Sorry, Sara. Star City is kinda far away so I figured you’d prefer I go faster than have it take longer.” Sara’s mouth curls up a little wickedly.

“Well, Barry. Sometimes a girl likes it a little slower.” Barry’s face turns almost the same shade as his mask and his mouth hangs open as Mick snorts and Sara’s grin grows.

Len can’t look away from Barry’s open mouth, so beautifully enticing.

“Alright, Red. Run along now. Since you clearly don’t know how to treat Blondie right, we’ll take care of her.” Mick winks at Sara which makes her snort before he drops his arm around her shoulders. Barry’s face doesn’t change from it’s shocked embarrassment as he stares at Mick.

“What?!” He sounds so scandalized and Len can’t help but start to smile. Barry turns to look at him as if for an explanation. Len shrugs.

“‘Fastest Man Alive’ isn’t always a compliment, Flash.” Barry’s eyes get wider as his face stays red. 

“Oh my god. I can’t.” He puts his hand up to his ear. “Shut the fuck up, Cisco,” he says into his comm. Len snorts and Barry uses the hand up by his ear to point his finger at them, sweeping across to each one of them. “I don’t have to take this, you know. This is speedster-discrimination.” Barry’s face seems to turn back to his normal color and the corner of his mouth turns up slightly, clearly amused now that his embarrassment has faded slightly.

Len can feel his mouth curling to match Barry’s before he can stop it.

Barry drops his hand and looks at Sara.

“Call me when you want a ride back,” he says with his eyes flicking to Len’s, probably assuming that it would actually be Len that would contact him.

“Yeah, thanks but no thanks, Flash.” Barry just tilts his head to the side slightly in confusion.

“But. How are you supposed to get home?”

“I’ll walk.” Barry rolls his eyes at Sara’s deadpan answer.

“Just call me.” He pauses before his eyes start to glint dangerously. “I’ll go slow just for you, Sara.” Len can feel his eyes widen slightly at the clear innuendo and the dirty curl to Barry’s mouth.

Oh.

Sara rolls her eyes but smiles as Mick laughs. And then.

God, and then Barry turns to him and winks.

 _Oh_.

He feels that wink like it was a physical thing and he hopes that his face doesn’t look as shocked as he feels. He feels a zing of hot arousal shoot down his spine as he thinks about _Barry Allen’s dirty side._

Barry flashes away, making Sara bitch as the wind messes up her hair again before she and Mick turn to head to the front of the bar.

It takes Len a couple more seconds than that to get his brain back online.

This might be a problem, Len admits to himself.

This might be a _big_ problem.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is kinda short and pretty filler-y, but I wanted to get something out because I know I haven't updated in a while. Also, I just got back from vacation so I wanted to get back into the swing of writing  
> <3


	6. Chapter 6

To say that the reaction to them walking into the bar is dramatic is…understating it a bit.

Len has barely made it through the door behind Mick and Sara when the bar falls completely dead silent, the only sound coming from the beat up, old jukebox in the corner. His eyes scan the room as Mick and Sara head towards the bar as if nothing is wrong. Len raises an eyebrow and all the sound returns.

This is going to be almost _too_ easy.

He follows Mick and Sara to the bar where a man is already leaning next to Sara with a wide smirk on his face. Len can feel his own mouth twitching up at the look on Sara’s face, the clear disinterest. If this were any other setting, he’d question Sara’s ability to go undercover. But he knows that Sara has read the room, read the attitudes of all the people here.

He knows that Sara knows that men like the one leaning next to her love a woman who looks like she can and will kill them.

Len comes up behind the guy, who turns around when he sees Sara look briefly behind him. He jerks into an upright position and grabs his drink while muttering something about needing to catch a train. Len takes his place and leans his elbows on the polished wood.

“I didn’t think I was _that_ scary.” A whiskey on the rocks is placed in front of him and he nods to the bartender.

“Oh be quiet, Leonard. You love that shit.” He shrugs at Sara while Mick snorts into his beer on her other side.

He feels his phone buzz in his pocket and when he pulls it out, he sees it’s a text from Barry. He rolls his eyes and shoves the phone back into his front pocket and ignores how nice Barry annoying him feels.

“What did Red want?” Len flicks his eyes to the side to look at Mick but doesn’t bother to turn his head.

“Who said it was him?” Sara and Mick both snort and Len can feel himself start to scowl. “He was nagging me. Asking about what we’ve got so far.” Sara rolls her eyes.

“We just got here. He literally just dropped me off.”

“Patience isn’t a virtue that speedsters are known to have.” He turns around with his glass in hand and leans back on his elbow. “Now. Who’s the lucky son of a bitch who’s going to rat this lady out?” They scan the room and Len tries not to laugh at how many of the patrons are trying to look like they aren’t talking about or looking at them.

“Ten bucks on Leather & Chains.” Sara points with her chin at a tall, skinny man in the corner nursing a beer and when one of his friends slaps him on the shoulder, he finally drops his eyes from staring at them.

“I got thirty on Lady of the Shadows.” Mick takes a drink as he looks at the woman all the way across the bar who apparently couldn’t look away from Sara. 

Hey. Men aren’t the only ones who like a woman who looks like they could eat them alive.

Len does another scan of the bar before turning back around and take a long sip.

“Two hundred on Courage at the back wall.” He sees Sara and Mick turn their heads quickly and he smirks into his whiskey.

“Awful confidant of you,” Sara says just as Mick curses and Len takes a victorious sip. “What?”

“It’s always the scared ones that know the most shit. We’ve seen what this lady can do second-hand. That guys,” Mick gestures with his beer, “looks like he’s seen something at least half as bad as what she’s done first-hand.” Mick turns around to face the bar, as well. Sara follows a second or two later. She shrugs and gestures for another drink.

“I guess now we wait,” she says while gesturing for a refill of his drink as well. Mick asks her how Team Arrow and Star City are; or, rather, he asks how the ‘men in tights are’.

“They don’t wear tights, Mick.”

“Nah, I’m pretty sure The Arrow wears tights.” They bicker about it until Sara rolls her eyes and says that they’re fine. 

Len’s throwing back the last of his whiskey when he feels someone step into his personal space. He makes sure he doesn’t pause, but instead finishes up the drink and puts it down slowly. He peeks at Sara out of the corner of his eye to get a clue of who it is and when he sees her mouth pinch in disappointment, he can’t stop from smirking. He hums and turns to face the newcomer, leaning on one arm.

Who looks like he’s going to shit himself.

Len gets the distinct feeling that it isn’t because of him, though.

“Well, well, well. To what do I owe the invasion of my bubble?” The man takes an immediate step back but his face never changes; never gets any more or less panicked. Len stands up straight, a little shocked to see that he’s around the same size of the man, despite the man’s clear attempts at trying to appear five feet tall. “What do you want, kid?”

The man wrings his hands before dropping them, clearly trying to physically make himself relax.

“It’s been over s-six months since your last heist.” Len can feel his eyebrow raise, in response to the statement and the stutter in fear from a man who looks just as much a criminal as Len, more or less.

“Your point?” The man’s eyes flick away from his in fear before forcing his eyes back to Len’s.

“My point is, um,” he says, swallowing before continuing, “is that you must be in need of a crew.”

“Hm. You are in possession of a good fortune, Leonard.” He turns his head enough to give Sara a sly look out of the corner of his eye while Mick snorts before facing forward again and gesturing for another drink.

“While that may be the case, it doesn’t tell me _what_ it is you want.” He picks up the new glass and gestures for the man to follow him. He makes his way to the far corner of the bar to a table and spins a chair around to sit in it backwards. The man looks around the bar quickly before taking the seat across from him.

Sara and Mick flank the sides.

“Now. Let’s start from the beginning. Who,” he points at the man with the hand holding his drink, “the hell are you.”

The man leans forward and rests his elbows on the table and clasps his hands together.

Len can feel the table shaking from the way he’s bouncing his leg.

“It doesn’t matter who I am. What matter’s is—“

“Nu-huh,” he shakes his finger, cutting the man off. “ _I_ decide what does and does not matter. _Now._ ” He squints at the man and puts his glass down delicately, controlled. “Who the hell are you?”

The man’s eyes widen and he can see Sara raise her hand to cover her smile.

“Ed. Ed Young.” Len tilts his head back slightly.

“No relation, I presume.” That gets a questioning look from Ed and gets Mick and Sara to both duck their heads to hide their smiles. “Nevermind. So. Ed Young. Now that we’re all acquainted,” he says, pausing to take a drink and watch the way Ed’s eyes flicker to Sara, “we can get down to business.”

“You need a crew.” Len raises his eyebrow.

“Say that I do. What is it that you think _you_ could do about it?” Ed unclasps his hands and places them flat out on the table.

“I know someone. Someone with powers.” Ed looks around the bar again with some panic. Len tilts his head slightly in feigned interest even as he can feel the excitement building.

Criminals. _Easy._

“Well, dear Edwin—“

“Actually, it’s Edwar—“

“I don’t care. If all you’re bringing to me is someone with powers and you’re expecting me to be impressed, then you are sorely mistaken, my friend.”

“She can control people.”

It’s said in a rush, and is met by silence at the table. Mick slams his beer down.

“Explain,” Mick grunts out.

 

Twenty minutes and two more drinks later, they’re leaving the bar.

“I think that was the easiest recon mission I’ve ever done,” Sara says, suspicion clear in her voice.

“I’m afraid that Central’s criminal underworld isn’t as devious as what we’re used to.” As they walk around the bar to the back alley, he pulls out his phone and dials.

“I didn’t even get to punch anyone,” he hears Mick mutter.

“I’m sure there’ll be plenty of time to punch someone later, Mick,” he finishes saying right as the call is answered.

“Why is Rory punching someone?” Len smirks and turns away from the others.

“Don’t you worry your head about that, Flash.”

“Sounds _exactly_ like something I should be worried about.”

“Hm. Care to give us a ride back?”

A sigh.

“I’m not a chauffeur, you know?” Len grins and is happy that his back is facing Sara and Mick.

“I beg to differ. Now be a good hero and come pick us up. We have news.” He hangs up and turns around to face the matching incredulous faces of Sara and Mick. “What,” he huffs, tugging at his leather jacket sleeve.

They look at each other.

“I told you.”

“I didn’t think it was _that_ obvious.” He can feel his lips purse in annoyance.

“Both of you, shut the fuck up,” he growls, jabbing a finger at them. Sara opens her mouth to reply but is cut off by being, literally, swept away.

Mick goes next.

The Flash stops in front of him.

“Ready, Snart?” He raises his eyebrow, making Barry roll his eyes.

In the next second, his stomach lurches and he’s standing in the cortex. He takes a few deep breaths to steady himself and sees Sara leaning a little against the console.

Mick looks unfazed.

Barry pulls off his cowl and claps his hand.

“Alright! B-team says they have something.” Cisco and Caitlin walk into the main room from opposite sides of the cortex.

“Now, Barry,” he drawls as he walks slowly around the others until he makes it to the T.V.s on the back wall. “If you want to know what we found, I expect a little more respect than that.” He faces the T.V.s 

“Well, you guys sure as hell aren’t 'The A-Team'.” Len smiles.

“I’m insulted, Cisco. I’m sure that if you’d been on some of our missions you wouldn’t be so skeptical. Now. Ed Young.”

“No relation?” Cisco mumbles. Len smirks and turns around when he hears the tapping of keys.

“No relation. Now, our young friend here,” he says, gesturing at the T.V. behind him where, when he glances, has Ed’s criminal record, “approached us at Saints & Sinners. He knew someone who wants in on a heist. Someone with powers.”

He walks forward to the console and leans on his hands.

“Caroline Jacobs.” He watches as Cisco pulls up her criminal record. “Caught a few times while working with her _late_ twin brother, Matt.” He turns to look at the screen as the others read over her file.

“Her brother was struck by lightning,” Cisco says softly and Len nods.

“He was _killed_ by lightning. And guess who was standing right next to him.”

“You found all this out from Ed?” Len smiles and faces the others again.

“He happily told us all he could in order to get us to agree to a meeting with her.”

That gets all of Team Flash to complain loudly. He holds up a hand, stopping them.

Barry crosses his arms.

“The plan wasn’t to get her to join your _Rogues,_ Snart! The plan was to just get information!” Len tenses and rolls his eyes and he has to stop himself from frowning.

“That might have been your plan, Flash, but I know for a fact that this will all go easier if we just follow _my_ plan, hm?” Barry squints but nods stiffly. “Thank you. Now, if you all don’t mind, I have a heist to plan.” He turns on his heel and heads out of the cortex.

He hears Sara ask Barry to run her back to Central right before he feels the rush of wind go past him. He can hear Mick’s heavy footsteps behind him right as Barry appears next to him, walking in stride with him.

“You’d better know what you’re doing, Snart.” He rolls his eyes and picks up his pace.

Barry keeps in line with him. Damn speedsters.

“So little faith, Bartholomew. When have any of my plans failed?” He doesn’t need to hear Mick’s snort to know that he’s laughing at Len.

“Yeah, sure, Snart. Just…please keep me updated?” Barry’s voice goes soft, and when Len looks at him, his eyes have gone all stupidly soft. Len can feel the tension leave him and he has to force himself not to look at the lovely pout of Barry’s mouth.

“Anything for you, Flash.”

It comes out softer than he wants it to, but thankfully Barry only hears the sarcasm. He rolls his eyes and knocks his shoulder against Len’s.

“I’ll hold you to that.” With that, Barry flashes further into the Labs.

Once he’s sure Barry is far enough away, Len has to stop and close his eyes.

He hears Mick’s footsteps come up next to him.

Mick doesn’t say anything this time when Len starts walking again.

He doesn’t know which is worse.

A stupid comment from Mick, or the understanding silence.

 

He wakes in the middle of the night, his cock pressed hard against the mattress as the last images of Barry’s beautiful lips wrapped around his cock fade away. He bites his lip and slowly grinds down, a groan already building in his throat. He tilts his head until he can bite down on his pillow and starts grinding harder and faster, groaning into the pillow.

God, the way Barry had looked in the dream. On his knees, lips red and puffy from sucking Len’s cock and hair all mussed from Len’s fingers.

The wet heat of his mouth as Len thrust slowly in and the hot shot of desire when Barry let him.

He lifts his hip up slightly to shove a hand down his pajama pants, hissing in pleasure when he finally wraps a hand around himself.

He comes with a long groan to the memory of the Barry in his dream moaning around his cock.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes that was a pride and prejudice reference


	7. Chapter 7

Their meeting with Jacobs is the next night. Len watched the news earlier that day and sees another failed heist.

Len could tell from the footage, though, that her control was getting more absolute. The woman in the footage looked like she wanted to be there. Compared to the other news footage of the two men and how terrified they had looked, it was clear that Jacobs is getting better at controlling people completely.

He had gotten a text from Barry asking if he’d seen the news, and Len had replied in the affirmative. Barry had asked if they wanted to come to the Labs for a team meeting, but Len declined. He needed to get a fake heist whipped up by tomorrow night.

The whole team is just lucky that Len has six different heist plans rotating in his head at any given time.

He’s thinking something small, nothing too dangerous as if he were just testing how the crew works together. It can’t be too easy either, he knows. That may come off as suspicious, or at least insulting. He wouldn’t want to hit Jacobs’ ego too hard before the heist even starts.

He briefly thinks of an armored van, for nostalgia’s sake, but decides against it. Too easy and not enough people involved to require a meta’s ‘help’.

So he starts to think about the kinds of people that are at the places that they would rob. Banks have more people, more security, more people to control. But, more likely to have people that will fight against the control as hard as possible.

A museum still has security, but not as much and people care less about artifacts.

That could work. She could control a guard to get them through the security.

He looks around the warehouse he’s at and spots the rolled up blueprints of different museums in the area. He walks over and looks at the different labels, smirking at the label for the Central City Museum before pulling the tube out of the pile.

Perfect.

He brings it to his table and unrolls it, looking over the familiar layout of the museum he had spent six months studying years before. He can’t help the way the corner of his mouth curls up.

Call him sentimental all you want. Everyone loves a good callback.

He hears the loud banging of the warehouse industrial door opening and turns to look only long to make sure that it’s Mick walking in before picking up his marker and uncapping it, tapping the top against his lips.

“You figure it out?” He hears Mick’s boots come up around to his side and he shrugs. Mick leans his hands on the table, just shy of the blueprints.

“Maybe.” He puts the pen in his mouth and takes the pencil out from behind his ear, jotting down an estimated time on a pad of paper.

“Really, Snart?” Len glances up quickly to see Mick’s raised eyebrow. “You tryin’ to take Underoos on a date?”

“Shut the fuck up, Mick,” he mumbles around the pen in his mouth. He puts the pencil back and takes the marker out of his mouth. “It’s familiar and easy. I’ll barely even have to do any reconnaissance.” He ignores Mick’s sarcastic mumble of ‘sure, of course’ and focuses on the plans.

He’s trying to remember the guard’s schedule from all those years ago, but decides he’ll just have to figure it out again. He’s sure they had changed their schedule since then, especially with how he had robbed them in broad daylight and got away with it. He’s still pretty proud of that.

He’s startled out of his planning by his phone vibrating. He picks it up off the table and feels his eyebrows scrunch in confusion.

Why was Barry calling him at three in the morning?

“It’s a little passed your bedtime,” he says as he answers and he tries to make it sound like he isn’t smiling.

“It’s a little passed yours, too, old man.” He snorts at Barry’s sassy tone and tucks the phone between his shoulder and his ear in order to cap the pen he’s holding.

“How do you know I wasn’t asleep, hm? Maybe you disturbed my beauty rest.”

“Like you said, Snart. Crime never sleeps.” He outright laughs at Barry’s imitation of his voice. “I’m actually calling to help you out.” He feels his eyebrows raise in surprise.

“Oh, really? Well, please. Help away.” He can hear the wind through the phone and wonders where Barry is that’s so windy.

“I have the guards’ schedule mapped out.” He pulls the phone away from his ear and looks at in surprise before cutting his eyes across the room to where Mick is nursing a beer.

“Guards’ schedule for _what,_ exactly?” He can practically hear Barry rolling his eyes through the phone, and the sigh comes through loud and clear.

“For the _museum,_ Snart.” Len is glaring at Mick now, absolutely sure that he must have told Team Flash somehow.

“And how, dear Barry, do you know what heist I’m planning?”

“Oh my god,” Barry mumbles, amusement clear in his voice. “I know what heist you’re planning because I know _you_ , Snart. You have to plan a heist in a short amount of time, and it can’t be a big one because it needs to look like a test run. So, of course you’d go with the museum. Quick and simple.”

Len can feel something churning in his gut and he can’t tell if it’s good or not.

Simple. Right.

Mick looks at him with concern from the other side of the room, so that feeling must show on his face.

How did this happen? How did he get so close? How did he let his guard down so much that a fucking _hero_ knows him well enough to know what fucking _heist_ he’s planning?

Oh no.

“Blah blah, I’m a genius. No need to praise me. Anyway, I have the guards’ schedule so if you don’t want to waste time stalking the museum like a weirdo,” Barry pauses and pointedly rustles a piece of paper near the phone speaker, “I’m your guy.”

His hand is shaking. Mick is standing up from his chair and making his way over.

Len takes a deep breath and tries to sound as normal as possible.

“I didn't know you had the patience to sit still long enough.” Barry laughs and Len’s just happy his voice didn’t waver too much.

“Shut up, dick. Alright, here’s the schedule.” Barry recites it as Len writes it down and if his handwriting is shit because he’s shaking too hard, no one but him and Mick have to know.

“Not bad, Flash. There’s hope for making a criminal out of you yet.” Barry laughs again and Len wants this call to be over.

“Yeah, yeah. Finish planning your heist. Don’t forget to call me after your meeting tomorrow so we can go over the plans.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” There’s a long pause.

“You okay, Snart? You sound…off.”

This call needs to be over _yesterday_.

“No need to worry about little ol’ me, Flash. Just stuck in my plans is all.” There’s another long pause.

“Alright. Whatever you say, Snart. Good night.” His hold on the phone tightens and he can feel his heart pounding, hard and fast.

“Good night, Barry.”

He doesn’t pull the phone away from his ear until he hears the beeping of the ended call.

He puts the phone down on the table and stares at it.

“Boss?” Len turns away from the table and goes to the cabinet in the makeshift kitchen and grabs a glass and picks up the whiskey bottle on the counter.

He pours a couple fingers and downs it. He fills it again, and throws that back, too.

He looks at the glass before abandoning it on the counter and drinking from the bottle.

He takes a couple of gulps before putting it down and leaning on the counter, his head ducked. The whiskey burns in his stomach and his hands still shake.

He lifts the bottle, ignoring the burn in his throat and the slight burning in his eyes as he takes a few more gulps.

He recaps the bottle but doesn’t turn around.

“You wanna explain what the fuck that was all about?” He rubs at his face and sighs, the whiskey making his stomach churn but at least it isn’t the same feeling as before.

“Nothing to worry about, Mick.” He can’t make his voice louder and it lacks the conviction needed to make Mick even think about backing off.

“Oh yeah? That sure didn’t look like nothin’. You wanna try that again?” Len clenches his fist and his hand is still shaking.

He takes a deep breath before turning around to actually face Mick. He hates the, albeit hidden, look of concern on Mick’s face.

“What the hell did Speedy say to you?” Len just looks at Mick for a few seconds before gesturing towards the table behind Mick.

“He gave me the guard schedule.” Mick raises an eyebrow.

“Ok? So he’s helpful. What’s the issue?” Len takes another deep breath and tries to unclench his fists.

“He gave me the guard schedule for a heist that I had _just_ decided I was doing.” Mick’s other eyebrow went up as well and his head tilts back slightly.

“He knew.” Len nods.

“He knew. He knew that that would be the heist I would do because he _knows me._ ” His hands clench up again and he punches the counter behind him. “I let him _fucking know me!”_ He’s yelling and he can’t help it. He brings up the hand that isn’t throbbing from the punch to rub over his hair roughly.

“I’m calling Lisa.”

“Don’t you _dare_ call her, Mick.” Mick is already turning to get his phone from across the room.

“I’m calling her, Snart. Her dumbass brother is having a fit because he finally realized he’s _in love_ with the damn hero he’s been chasing after for four fucking years. This is her job, not mine.”

Len freezes.

What?

“What did you just say?” He can’t make his voice any louder than the soft whisper it comes out as. Mick snorts and is already dialing the phone. He’s walking back over when Lisa picks up.

“Talk to your stupid brother. He’s just realized he’s in love with his hero.” There’s that word again. Mick puts the phone to Len’s ear, pushing until Len is forced to either take the phone or topple over.

“You hang up on me and I’ll come and kick your ass in person.” He feels his jaw clench.

“Charming as ever, Lise.”

“Curb the attitude, Lenny.” He rolls his eyes. “Now. You’ve finally realized the true depths of your magnificent feelings for The Scarlet Speedster—“

“Lisa I swear to fucking _god_ —“

“ _And_ now you’re, predictably freaking out about it.”

“I’m not ‘freaking out’. I’m reacting appropriately to the realization that I let a damn hero get so close.” There’s a long pause and a sigh.

“Lenny. Get your head out of The Nile—“

“That’s not how that phrase goes—“

“And act like an adult for once in your goddamn life.” He pulls the phone away from his ear to look at the caller I.D.

“This is _my_ sister I’m talking to, right?” She huffs.

“Cute. I can be mature when I want to be.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“You’re seein’ it right now. Here I am, telling you to get your shit together. It’s not the end of the world.”

“He’s engaged, Lise.”

“…So?” He rolls his eyes, his sister’s questionable morality not helping in the slightest.

“I’m his enemy.”

“You haven’t been his enemy since even before you went on that spaceship. Since before Lewis put a bomb in my head.” He ducks his head as he thinks back, pissed off that Lisa, and probably Mick as well, could tell even then that he had a ridiculously large soft spot for Barry.

He’s quiet for a long time and Lisa lets the silence sit, waiting for his response.

“It’ll never work, Lise,” he says softly and Lisa makes a sympathetic sound in response but she doesn’t argue.

They both know that happiness rarely ever works out the way they want it to.

“You can’t beat yourself up over this, okay? Let yourself have this.”

“I’m not having _anything_.”

“You know what I mean. Let yourself love him, okay?” He doesn’t say anything when she pauses. “We both need a little of that in our lives. Sometimes you just gotta love a hero to make you a better person.”

He knows she’s thinking about Cisco and he wants to roll his eyes at the same time he wants to physically drag Cisco to his sister’s apartment so he would actually ask Lisa out and make her happy.

“It’s a weakness, Lisa. He knows me. He knows how I _think_.” She sighs and he can hear rustling and pictures her rubbing her face in frustration.

“Is that so damn bad, Lenny? It’s not like he’s one of the Families or a crew member. He’s the _Flash_. He’s good people.”

He lets his head call back and closes his eyes.

“Len?” He opens his eyes again.

“Yeah, Lise. I’ll think about it.” She scoffs.

“Don’t ‘think about it’, ass. Just listen to your sister for once. She’s smarter than you.” He laughs at her. “Fuck you,” she says, laughingly.

Once they stop laughing, he can feel that his shoulders have relaxed and the churning in his stomach has stopped.

He’s also starting to feel the whiskey. Hm. Funny that.

“Hey, Lise?”

“Hm?” He’s quiet for a few moments.

“Thanks.” She fake gasps.

“Leonard _Snart_! Are you thanking me? Go give the phone to Mick, I need to tell him that you thanked me.” He rolls his eyes.

“ _Goodbye,_ Brat.” She makes a faux outraged noise.

“You take my advice and then you leave. I see how it is. Ungrateful.”

“ _Goodnight_.”

She’s still laughing when he hangs up. He can feel the corners of his mouth twitching up and he stares at the phone in his hand for a few seconds.

“She talk some sense into you?” He throws the phone back at Mick as he walks towards Len.

“As much sense as she’s capable of.”

“Well, it’s a hard job knocking sense into that big fucking head of yours.” He rubs his hand over his hair again as he stands up from his lean against the counter. He brushes passed Mick as he walks back over to the laid out plans.

He’s just putting his hands down on the table so he can lean when a beer appears next to his right hand. He looks at it and then up at Mick who is staring into his own bottle.

“It’s not the end of the world, you know?” Mick doesn’t look at him so Len looks back down at the plans.

“It’s a weakness.”

“It’s a strength, dumbass.” Len looks up from the plans to see that Mick is looking at him this time. “You can’t tell me that there wasn’t a little somethin’ like love that kept our team together, that kept us _alive_.” He flinches at that but Mick ignores it. “The Legends are like family and if you think that that is a weakness then being on that ship didn’t teach you a damn thing.”

It’s Len that doesn’t meet Mick’s eyes this time.

“It got me killed, Mick.”

“It saved the _universe,_ shithead.” Mick walks away, taking a long drink from his beer. Len stares at his back before picking up his own beer and taking a sip.

He puts the beer down and rubs his hand down his face, the coolness of his hand from the bottle a welcome relief.

Okay.

He closes his eyes, rolls his shoulders back, and takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly.

When he looks back down at the plans, he can feel everything start to drop away.

Plans. That’s what he’s good at.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> so this is....an insanely long chapter so like...be ready

He’s waiting at the warehouse he told Ed to tell Jacobs to meet them at.

It’s a mostly empty building except for a few tables and worktable.

He wanted to have a space that was large enough that it would seem less awkward to far apart. This way, if Jacobs gets any bright ideas, it won’t be that hard to avoid her touch.

He looks down at his watch. Two minutes until midnight. He looks down at the plans he has laid out, scanning the blueprints and the times.

He had checked the guard schedule before the meeting. Of course he did.

And of course, Barry was right.

He can feel his mouth tighten in displeasure at the proud feeling he has in his chest.

He glances to the side to look at the whiteboard he set up with labels and pictures. Everything is set up, each member of the crew having their own section of what their tasks are.

He rolls his shoulders and stretches his neck, trying to release the tension that’s built up from the stress of this and from the hours of hunching over blueprints.

He listens to the constant, comforting click of Mick’s lighter from where he’s sitting on one of the farther tables and lets that help relax him.

He checks his watch just as it hits midnight and raises his eyebrow as he hears the sound of car doors slamming.

Huh. Well, she’s punctual at least.

The door at the side entrance opens and he turns to face them as Jacobs marches in with Ed on her tail.

She looks remarkably like Lisa. Besides the facial structure, he’s not certain he wouldn’t mistake her for Lisa from the back.

If it weren’t for the clothes, of course.

Jacobs is wearing tied up boots that look remarkably like Len’s.

She’s wearing a pair of jeans that are a looser fit than Lisa would ever be caught dead in and a leather jacket that’s clearly for function rather than fashion over an acid-washed t-shirt.

Where Lisa makes herself look delicate and harmless, to those that don’t look too closely, Jacobs very clearly projects danger.

He hears Mick shift behind him and he doesn’t know if it’s from the new danger or the fact that she looks like she could kill Mick and he’s the kind of guy that likes that shit.

Len hopes it’s the former, but knowing Mick it’s probably the latter.

He resists the urge to roll his eyes.

“Snart,” she says, curtly, as she stops a few yards away from him, Ed coming into line next to her. He knows that tone of voice; the voice of a woman who has had to shown to be more capable and more serious than every man around her just to be taken half as seriously.

He feels his head start to tilt back in appreciation before he remembers the melon baller. He doesn’t let that thought show on his face, but instead just squints his eyes like he’s sizing her up. She crosses her arms and Len glances quickly at the scarring he can see on her right hand and up her arm as her jacket rides up with the motion.

“Jacobs.” Her head tilts back slightly, and he knows it’s in shock to him referring to her as if she were any other crew member. He moves his eyes to the side. “Edwin.” That gets him a glare from Ed, but a small smirk from Jacobs.

“I told you, it’s not _Edwin_ —“

“And I told you that I don’t care. Now.” He claps his hands once. “How do we feel about really old jewelry?”

 

 

The sky is just beginning to lighten when Jacobs and Ed leave the warehouse. Len waits until he hears their car pull away before texting Barry, telling him to get Team Flash together once they all wake up. He starts packing up the plans, pulling the things off of the whiteboard and piling them all up. He gives some of the papers and pictures to Mick to burn, the less evidence around the better. He rolls up the blueprints and wraps rubber bands around them, snapping them a few times to ease his stress.

He sighs and taps his fingers against one of the rolled up tubes, thinking over the plans until Mick walks by and snatches it out of his hands. He curls his hand into a loose fist before dropping it down to his side. Mick puts the rolled up tube in a pile with the others before dropping the papers that Len handed him into a metal pail. Len leans back against a table and pinches his lip in thought while he watches Mick wander around, finding and grabbing lighter fluid. He watches Mick until the flames are coming high out of the top of the pail. He sighs and straightens up, leaving Mick to his fire.

He gathers the rolled up blue prints and walks them out to the car, dropping them in the backseat before heading back inside. Once he’s got everything else gathered up, Mick’s fire has already burned to ash and he’s pouring half a water bottle into the pail.

He takes the rest of the supplies out to the car and gets in the passenger seat while he waits for Mick to lock up. As Mick gets into the driver’s seat, Len’s thinking about how to plan Team Flash into the heist, fingers tapping against his thigh.

They get back to the apartment, but Len is still so focused on planning that he barely notices, just walks on autopilot into the apartment before sitting on the couch and staring at the far wall.

The sun has fully risen by the time his phone buzzes, breaking his concentration.

His phone says it’s nearly eight in the morning.

He checks the text from Barry saying that Team Flash will all be there by 8:30. He stands up, rolling and cracking his neck, and heads to the coffee maker that Len can hear running. Mick is sitting at the counter, glasses on and coffee in hand while he reads. As Len walks by, he lifts the front side of the book just enough to read the title, Mick lifting his hand to allow him. He hums, and turns around to grab a mug and pour his coffee, grabbing some vanilla creamer from the fridge.

“You liking it?” Mick hums behind him, and Len turns around and leans against the counter to sip his coffee. He raises an eyebrow, waiting for Mick to finish the paragraph or chapter. Mick picks up his bookmark and saves his place, taking off his glasses.

“The doctor is a dick. No wonder his kid leaves.” Len smiles into his next sip of coffee, amused that anyone would call Dr. Frankenstein’s creation a ‘kid’. “It’s good though. We headin’ out?” Len nods but doesn’t move, sipping on his coffee. Mick throws back the rest of his coffee and stands to put the mug in the sink. He takes Len’s, too, much to Len’s chagrin.

He wanted the rest of that.

He rubs his hand down his face before straightening up and heading for the door.

 

Len and Mick walk into the cortex, 8:30 on the dot.

Cisco and Snow are already there, Snow adding notes on her tablet to a set of brain scans that are projected up onto the T.V.s while Cisco has his eyes closed while taking a sip from a to-go coffee cup. Len clears his throat and only raises an eyebrow at the way they both jump.

“Flash did tell you we were coming, correct?” They look at each other before turning to look back at him. Cisco puts down his coffee cup while Snow moves over to the cortex to put her tablet down.

“Well, yeah. But we didn’t expect you to be, y’know,” Cisco says vaguely, shrugging instead of finishing the sentence.

“On time? Barry said you’d be here at 8:30, so we’re here.” Cisco looks sheepishly over at Snow and she shrugs at them.

“We’re used to Barry’s version of ‘on time’, I guess.” Len rolls his eyes but moves closer, turning a rolling chair enough to sit down in it while Mick goes to lean against one of the walls.

“When are we supposed to expect the fastest man alive to actually get here?” Snow picks up her tablet and turns around as Cisco picks up his coffee, both shrugging.

Len sighs and rubs his palm against his eye, slightly annoyed.

If Len has to suffer through doing all this, if he has to suffer seeing Barry and feeling…whatever the fuck he’s feeling, the least Barry could do is be on time.

“Alright. Well. While we wait, do we have anything new?” Snow holds her tablet pen up pointedly.

“Actually, yes. You see these scans?” They all look to the T.V.s as Snow marks up the left one. “The one on the left is a normal brain scan. You see how it’s all mostly lit up the same amount? No one section is much brighter than another?”

They nod as she labels the different lit up sections with acronyms. She circles the area that she marks as PFC.

“This section is call The Prefrontal Cortex. It’s the section of the brain that deals with your executive functions. You want to go get that bag of chips? This section lets you do that.”

“It’s also where you get your impulse control.” Snow lifts her head up from where she had it ducked down over the tablet and both her and Cisco turn slowly to look at Mick.

Len can’t help the smile that starts to curl at the corner of his mouth.

“Um, yeah. Yes. That’s exactly right, Rory.” Len can’t help but snort at the blatant confusion in Snow’s voice.

People tend to forget that being a criminal, being a _good_ criminal, takes some brains.

They also forget that being obsessed with fire forces you to become an amateur scientist.

Len isn’t the _smart_ one. He’s just smart in a more obvious way.

“Pyromania is an impulse control disorder, Doc. You think I didn’t learn a _little_ about it from the hundred different quacks I got sent to?” Snow opens her mouth before closing it in shock. Mick grins back, one of his smugger looks, and Snow flushes and turns quickly back to look at the T.V.s.

“Well, yes. Rory is correct. It’s the section of brain that controls our impulses, as well as our judgement, management of different emotions, and planning. Right below it, which can’t be seen here, is The Anterior Cingulate Cortex, which helps with decision-making, empathy, and error detection.” She puts a line where, presumably, the cortex is under the other one.

She moves to the other screen, and turns to face the rest of them, still looking down at her tablet.

“Now. This is the scan of someone with ADHD. Here, the Prefrontal Cortex is almost completely dark. They have poor impulse control and a hard time regulating emotions.”

“Now, we’re pretty sure if we could get the brain scans of someone under her control, their Prefrontal Cortex would be lit up like the fourth of July.” Snow walks back over to the cortex and puts down the tablet as Cisco spins in his chair, explaining. “We think that she’s hacking into the Prefrontal Cortex and taking over their behaviors, and some of their emotions. Unfortunately, because of the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, she can’t control all of their behaviors and emotions.”

Len tilts his head back, trying to absorb all of this.

“Why, if she has control of the Prefrontal, can’t she control _everything_ they do?” Len looks at Cisco, who shrugs.

“The brain has too many redundancies. Unfortunately for her, because of sections like the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, she can’t control all of their behaviors and emotions. Which sucks for them, too. They can fight a little and get upset about what’s happening, but they can’t stop it.” Len sighs and brings both hands to rub down his face.

“Great. This is just great. How does this help us?” He drops his hands and slouches further in the chair just as lightning bursts into the room. He starts, the chair rolling slightly back with the motion and Mick pushes off the wall, startled and expecting a fight.

Cisco and Snow barely react other than Cisco putting down a paperweight and Snow fixing her hair. Len breathes out slow, trying to get his heart rate back to normal.

“Nice of you to join us, Barry.” Barry rubs the back of his head, and turns his sheepish smile on Len.

“There was traffic?” Cisco snorts and Len can feel the completely unamused look he gives Barry.

He has to swallow and look away when Barry shoots him a wide grin, bright and slightly embarrassed, like as if he was called out for being tardy by a teacher.

Damn this beautiful boy.

“Anyway,” Cisco says, rolling his eyes. “We were just telling them about the Prefrontal and the Anterior Cingulate Cortex.”

“You were just explaining why all of that _matters_ , Ramon.” Barry perks up and comes over to where Len is sitting at the console, his leg knocking into the chair and pushing Len to the side slightly in his excitement.

He smells good. He smells clean, like a scentless shampoo clearly chosen out of his need to not have scents mess with a crime scene. His hair is wet closer to his roots, darker there and making a section flop down on his forehead, almost to his eyes.

Len clenches his fist in panic when he realizes that he’s blatantly staring. Thankfully, all of the room is focused on the screens across the room.

All except Mick’s, of course. He doesn’t even need to look; he can just feel the weight of Mick’s stare against the side of his face.

“So, if we can prove that it’s the Prefrontal Cortex that she’s controlling, then we can create something the counteracts that. If we can do that, then we can use it to stop her victims, and maybe even stop _her_.” Barry gestures excitedly as he types on the console to bring up equations that…mean absolutely nothing to Len.

Not in the least because he’s too busy watching Barry’s beautiful fingers. He shakes his head, looking away from Barry completely.

“Hmm…fascinating. Truly.” He stands and adjusts his leather jacket before wandering around the console. “We have news for you, as well.”

Mick pushes away from the wall and comes to stand next to Cisco. He gestures, telling Cisco what to bring up on the screens while Len explains.

“We finished meeting with Jacobs early this morning. It went…well.”

“Well? You met with a woman who made another woman _kill herself._ ” Len turns a glare on Snow, only managing to make her soften her own glare slightly.

“Neither Mick, nor myself are dead and she didn’t touch us. So yes, Doctor. I think it went _well._ ” She tilts her chin back, a haughty acceptance. Len pushed a harsh breath out through his nose before turning back to the room at large. “She agreed to the plan with a few added tweaks to make better use of her powers.”

Cisco finishes up bringing up the blueprints of the museum and the article on the main attraction.

“The day after tomorrow, at 0200 hours, I will be hacking into the secured side door. Once we are in, Jacobs will take control of the two guards stationed there and force them to stand their post and do nothing, not even call for backup. Young will hack into the security system and take out the cameras and door alarms. Cisco,” he says, making Cisco sit up straighter in his chair, “will make sure that that happens. I don’t know Young, I don’t trust him, and I don’t trust his hacking.” Cisco nods and gestures at the console.

“That won’t be a problem. That museum is child’s play.” Barry side-eyes Cisco who avoids eye contact completely.

“How do you know how easy it is to hack into the museum security system?” Cisco rubs the back of his neck, a sheepish gesture so like Barry that Len can’t help the way his lips start to curl up.

“While I’m endlessly fascinated by Cisco’s lucrative career as a cyber criminal,” he trails off, not needing to actually vocalized that there are much more pressing matters at hand.

Barry squints his eyes at Cisco briefly, but the twitching at the corners of his mouth soften the glare and Cisco fakes a completely innocent expression and failing by a mile.

Len shares a look with Snow before they both roll their eyes.

Children, honestly.

“You let me know when the systems are disabled, Cisco. Then, we’ll be making our way to the main hall where _this_ lovely lady is sitting.” Cisco taps and brings up the picture from the museum website.

“A _crown?_ ” Len waggles a finger at Barry.

“Not just _any_ crown, Barry. This is the crown worn by the Vajracarya Buddhist priests in the late 13th century. It is both very expensive and _very_ old. It’s estimated worth is a beautiful $2 billion.” He walks around the console and puts his foot on one of the wheels of Cisco’s chair and pushes him away.

At the same time, he takes the opportunity to gently push Barry’s shoulder, just enough for Barry to take the hint to move without giving into the impulse to drag his hand down Barry’s arm or up through his hair.

“The best part is, of course,” he says while he gets to the main page of the museum website, “is that it isn’t the main attraction. The museum is hosting an exhibit of art from 18th century Mexico.”

“So. Expensive but not high profile, and not the main focus of the guards.” Len looks over at Barry and nods.

“Keeps us far enough away from most of the guards. Keeps her victims as close to a minimum as possible without being suspicious.”

Barry holds his stare and Len can feel himself start to bristle automatically at the assessing look. He stands his ground though, having stared down far more aggressive people than the hero in front of him.

The stare-off only lasts a few seconds that feel like hours before Barry ducks his head, a soft smile appearing on his lips.

“I told you, Snart. There’s good in you.” Barry peaks up at him through his lashes, soft smile not leaving his face.

It’s beautiful. It’s so shockingly beautiful that Len can’t even drudge up his, normal, knee-jerk reaction to Barry inferring that he’s good in any way.

“While Jacobs controls the guards, Snart’ll get the crown. He’ll also ‘accidentally’ set off the silent alarm,” Mick says, startling Len out of his downward-spiral of loving Barry more and more.

“Air quotes? Did I just see Heatwave use _air quotes_?” Mick glares down at Cisco before shoving at the back of his head.

“Shut up, dickhead.”

“I set off the alarm,” Len says pointedly, stopping whatever Cisco is about to say back to Mick. “Don’t do anything to reroute the alarm to here, Cisco. We need it to seem as legit as possible, and I know that police response time well enough that it won’t be a problem.” Cisco nods if a little reluctantly.

“So then the Flash gets called.” Len glances back at Barry out of the corner of his eye, not trusting himself to look directly at him.

“The Flash gets called. You show up, we fight, and the whole crew gets flashed off to the police station. Mick and I escape mid-route, naturally. It’s up to you what you want to do with our darling Ed. Despite his unfortunate name, he does seem to be an okay sort.” Barry shakes his head, but Len has a feeling that Ed will find himself standing outside Saints & Sinners by the end of the night.

“Well, it sounds like an easy enough plan.” Len smirks a little and turns around to lean his ass against the console.

“Remember my rules, Flash.” Barry rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, I remember. Expect the plan to go off the rails.” Len tilts his head back, secretly pleased that Barry has a good enough memory to remember the things Len says. “I’ll be on the lookout for sabotage, Snart.” Len hums before standing up straight.

“Good. Now, Cisco. Comms, if you would?” Cisco hops up out of his chair and hurried out into one of the side labs.

Len can feel eyes on him and glances to see Snow staring at him. He raises an eyebrow at her and she quickly looks at Barry before looking back at him. Len feels himself tense up and his expression close off. She squints at him at this reaction before pointedly looking down at the tablet in her hands.

Len doesn’t relax, even after seeing that Barry completely missed that whole interaction by virtue of fiddling with his phone.

“Okay, I gotta jet off. I’m meeting with Iris and the wedding planner, um…ten minutes ago?” Cisco returns to the room with a dramatic eye-roll while Len struggles to keep his expression neutral and not look like pain had just shot through his body at the reminder that Barry is, in fact, _untouchable._

“You know that if you’re late for your wedding, you’re not gonna live long enough to make it to your honeymoon?” Len turns his back to Barry and holds out his hand for the two comms Cisco drops into it.

“Yes, Cisco, I know. Iris and Joe are in the top two slots to make me disappear if I’m not at least two hours early.” Len takes a deep breath before facing the room and walking backward out of the cortex, Mick following him without looking back at Team Flash.

“As always, it’s been a pleasure. Don’t forget. 0200 hours. Do _not_ be late,” he says, pointing at Barry just to watch him duck his head and rub the back of his neck.

“We’ll be here, Cold.” Len nods at Cisco and turns on his heel, walking out of the Cortex. As Mick and him walk side by side out of Lab, he can feel his shoulders starting to slump, the exhaustion of planning and meeting with people non-stop for the last 24 hours catching up to him.

“The doc knows.” Len doesn’t even have the energy to be startled by Mick talking quietly in the unsettling silence of the Lab halls. He sighs and lets his eyes close for a moment.

“I know.”

“You think she’s gonna tell him?” He thinks about the deliberate way Snow looked away and shakes his head.

“No. I don’t.”

 

 

They put the comms in at 0100 as they’re driving to the warehouse, and turning them on causes a brief few seconds of static.

“Sounds like B-Team is ready.” Mick growls next to him, and it echoes slightly through the comms.

“I’ll show you ‘B-Team’, pipsqueak.”

“Please don’t antagonize my villains, Vibe.” Len can’t help the way he flushes with pride at being called _Barry’s_ villains. The intimate sound of Barry’s voice right in his ear sends a rush of heat down his spine that he has to breathe through it just to react normally.

“We’re pulling up to the warehouse to meet with Jacobs and Young,” he says as they arrive and get out of the car. “Try not to talk too much.” He smirks at the protesting noise Cisco makes, muffled by what sounds like food. “And if you chew in my ear, _Vibe_ , I’m not going to be held responsible for what I do.” The muffled noises stop as Cisco, most likely, pulled away from the mic. Len purses his lips slightly in satisfaction.

He hears the sound an engine approaching as a car pulls around to the back of the warehouse, headlights turning off. He looks at Mick as if he was talking to him directly as he pulls his goggles out of his trench coat pocket and pulls them over his head to hang around his neck.

“Jacobs and Ed are pulling up now. We’ll get ready and leave the channel open just in case.” He gets three separate, hushed, affirmations just as Jacobs gets out of the driver’s side, Ed getting out a few seconds later.

“You ready?” Ed looks to Jacobs as they both nod. “Great. Mick, grab what we need from inside.” Mick grunts and leaves, the door closing heavily behind him.

“I have to say, Snart,” Jacobs says, making Len tense up automatically. “I was surprised you said yes to all of…this.” She gestures vaguely at herself to insinuate what ‘this’ is. He tilts his head back and looks at her down his nose, suspicious but trying not to show it too much. “You usually prefer more of a challenge than this.” He hums in response.

“You’re right, of course,” he says, pausing for a few seconds before continuing. “This is a trial run. Your power is…interesting.” He can’t see her expression very well, but her body language doesn’t change so he continues. “The power of control would be perfect for heists, and it would be an _honor_ to have you on my crew.”

“Laying it on kind of thick there, Cold.”

“But first, I need to make sure you can _work_ with my crew,” he says, ignoring Cisco completely.

Her head tilts to the side and after a few more seconds, she nods.

“Alright, Snart. Your reputation precedes you. You know what you’re doing.” He snorts in response.

“I know what I’m doing and I’m _very_ good at it.” He hears Barry mumble an ‘oh my god’ under his breath and it takes all of his concentration to not outwardly grin. “I take my heists very seriously. This is something I love. I just need to make sure _you_ are as serious about this as I am.” In the darkness, he can see Ed turn to look at Jacobs before holding his hand out for Len to shake.

Smart.

He shakes Ed’s hand, grip firm but not too tight and matching Ed’s almost exactly. Mick comes back out of the warehouse, supplies in a box tucked under one arm.

“Boss?” Len nods and walks around the car. Mick puts the supplies in the back of their car.

“You can follow us. Park two streets over. We'll use ours as a getaway.” Which would be unfortunate as he likes this car if he didn’t know that they wouldn’t be taking any cars away from the scene.

Mick gets into the driver’s seat as Len hears the doors on the other car slam closed. He adjusts the comm in his ear and checks to make sure Jacobs is following them.

“Everyone ready?”

“Totally,” Cisco says, drawing out the vowels obnoxiously.

“I’m already suited up and Cisco has the programming up to take out the security.”

“I have _my_ programming up, Barry. It’s grade-A, Cisco-made coding.” Barry sighs, the sound crackling over the comms.

“Cisco has _his_ programming up.” He listens to them bicker back and force, Snow popping in every once in a while to add her own opinions. It’s comforting if he’s being honest. To have a crew, an in-so-far _reliable_ crew, happily arguing in his ear that reminds him so much of the Legends and when he sees Mick’s good-natured eye-roll, he knows that that’s what Mick is thinking of, as well.

They pull up around the corner from the museum and Len checks his watch.

0150.

They wait until they see Jacobs and Young come up the street from where they parked their car before getting out of their own.

By the time they make it to the back door, it’s 0200 and he’s pulling his goggles up into position over his eyes.

“Ready?” He says, quietly. He waits until he sees them all nod and gets a confirmation from Team Flash before pulling out the wires of the security system and gets the door unlocked. Twenty seconds. Not bad. He hears the electronic lock disengage and he backs up slightly.

His breath catches as Jacobs brushes passed him to get through the door first, but she doesn’t try to push any skin-to-skin contact. She slinks through the door as it cracks open and within moments, she taps on the door to let them know the coast is clear.

Len pulls the door all the way open and he can feel his stomach twist in disgust as he sees the two guards. They’re completely frozen, one has their hand hovering over his taser and the other is reaching for his radio hooked to his shoulder.

But it’s their eyes that makes Len vaguely sick.

Their eyes are both wide with fear. They’re looking between the whole crew with panic and he can see one of them starting to sweat, either with fear or with the effort to break the control.

He keeps his face blank as he looks away from the scared faces of the guards and nods at Jacobs. He can hear Ed tapping on the laptop behind him so he gets setup by the secondary set of doors.

“Tell us when the alarms are taken care of, Ed.” He can hear tapping over the comms and knows that Cisco picked up on his hint.

Thirty seconds later, Ed tells him that they’re in.

He waits a few more seconds until Cisco confirms it before pushing through the doors. Mick follows him through the door but falls back, making a show of keeping watch at the doors. They make their way through the museum on light feet as Cisco quietly keeps them updated on the status of the alarms and cameras every minute.

He checks his watch just as he hears the heavy steps of a security guard, right on time. He nods to Jacobs and she steps around him and presses against the wall, waiting for the guard to round the corner. Her hand whips out and Len watches as the guard automatically tenses but doesn’t move, eyes locking on Jacobs’ hand wrapped around his wrist without moving his head.

It takes not an insignificant amount of effort to stop his face from twisting up with the disgust he feels. He breathes heavily through his nose and tries to keep a level head as Jacobs peaks around the corner and gestures at them that the coast is clear.

They make it to one of the main halls, and along the left wall, Len can see the glass case with the crown sitting pretty on a pillow.

He can feel the way his heartbeat slows, his body settling into heist mode automatically as he starts to calculate the perfect way to get the prize out of its cage.

It takes Cisco giving him a security update to startle him out of this mode and remember that he has to actually fuck this up at some point. Which, he realizes now, is going to hurt his ego as much as being caught is going to hurt Jacobs.

He approaches the case from the side so he can keep his eyes on Jacobs as she wanders away slightly, looking at the art work and artifacts from a safe distance.

He gets the case raised slightly, and instead of disengaging the weight sensitive alarm, he presses it down and, within seconds, he can hear alarms going off in STARLabs.

“Be ready. Flash incoming.”

Within moments, a violent wind whips his coat around and he jumps away from the case towards the middle of the room.

“Captain Cold! You don’t have to do this!” Barry’s acting is fairly good. Good enough that he’s sure that Barry is calling upon the memory of all the times he’s said that to Len.

“Oh, I don’t know, _Flash_. It’s just so much fun. Why would I ever want to give any of this up?” He opens his arms wide to encompass everything; the museum and the fight. He drops his arms and reaches into his trench coat as if to grab a hidden cold gun. Barry zips away, and normally he would try and make sure his back is never facing the Flash but now he’s trying to keep Jacobs in his line of sight.

Barry stops a few yards away from her, and she turns quickly around, scarred hand already held in front of her.

“You got some new Rogues, Cold?” He smirked, eyes crinkling behind his goggles before he actually stops to think. Rogues? Wait. Where was Ed? He turns his head to look around, not seeing him—

He nearly jumps out of his skin when he hears Barry yell and he takes an automatic step forward, hand that was reaching into his trench coat coming out as if he could reach and touch Barry from here.

Ed steps out from around a pillar, pistol with a suppressor aimed at where the Flash is now hunched over slightly, hand over the gunshot wound in his side.

Fucking _Ed._

He doesn’t notice that Jacobs has her eyes locked on him until after he’s taken a second step towards Barry. His eyes flick over and meet hers, and the snarl he can see starting to form on her face can’t be good.

“I knew it,” she grinds out, her teeth clenched as she moves towards him with quick steps. He starts walking backward, eyes flicking between her and where Barry is finally standing up straight and turning towards Ed. “I _knew_ it! You’re a fucking traitor!” He’s about to turn on his heel and book it away from her when she gets close enough to snatch up his wrist.

It starts to burn right away as he hears Mick come running down the hall behind him, having heard the commotion through the comes.

She yanks him close to her, her grip stronger than he would have thought and she bares her teeth at him.

“You’re a fucking _liar_.”

The burning gets so much worse and he feels a drop in his stomach and the blood in his head starts to pound, loud and painful.

“Len!” Barry yells, and Len can spare enough of a glance to see Ed on the ground before the burning is gone and Jacobs is flung all the way across the room.

He’s trying to blink away the black spots that have taken over his vision when he feels a hand on his shoulder.

“You ok, boss?” His vision is tunneling and he wants the comfort of a gun in his hands, despite how useless it would be. Mick’s hand tightens on his shoulder and Len realizes that he hasn’t answered yet.

“No,” he lets out, weakly, and the answer feels like it’s being dragged out of him. His vision finally tunnels into nothingness and he’s just happy he’s unconscious _before_ he hits the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I figured I should let y'all know about the reference I keep making about Ed's name  
> Ed Young is a cult leader so like...Len cannot help but pick on poor Ed's unfortunate name


	9. Chapter 9

He jolts awake at the sound of metal hitting metal and a sigh. His eyes open and he’s catalogued the exits and people in the room before he’s even fully awake enough to register anything else. Three people. One exit. One person in front of the exit, the other two on his opposite side.

He jolts again when a gloved hand finds it’s way to his wrist in a gentle hold. He finally takes a deep breath and starts processing what is actually around him and turns his head to look to his right. Doctor Snow is attached to the hand on his wrist and the impersonally blank expression on her face paired with the feeling of a rubber glove is strangely comforting. Her eyes briefly flicker to his, betraying the concern underneath the expression she has on. Her eyes go back down and he realizes that she’s timing his pulse on her watch.

Mick is not-hovering a few feet behind and to the left of her, face carefully kept in a scowl to hide the worry in his eyes. He pushes away from the wall he’s leaning against and starts to move towards him. Len turns his head quickly to the left to find that it’s Barry who is blocking the exit, probably not intentionally, still in his Flash uniform and no longer bleeding. He has his cowl pushed back and his gloves off and he’s chewing on his thumbnail but freezes when Len locks eyes with him.

With that out of the way, he starts to catalogue how he feels, and immediately wishes he didn’t. He groans a curse out between his clenched teeth and lets his head fall back against the pillow. The hospital-style bed he’s on is already tilted up thankfully, so he doesn’t have to actually move too much.

“What the fuck happened? Where am I?” He doesn’t realize he’s closed his eyes until he has to open them to look at Mick.

“The meta grabbed you.” The meta? Oh. Ah. The worry in Mick’s eyes makes sense now. He looks down at his left wrist and sees it’s wrapped in gauze and it _hurts_ like a motherfucker.

His right is handcuffed to the bed.

“You’re in STAR Labs, Snart. How do you feel?” Snow lets go of his wrist and turns to write something down on the clipboard she has on the tray next to the bed.

“Like shit.” She darts a look his way and he sighs. “Like my face went two rounds with the floor instead of one.” She nods and writes something else down before putting the clipboard back down with a metal clank.

“Well, the good news is you didn’t break your nose on the way down.” He twitches it slightly and it hurts but she’s right. Definitely not broken.

“I can only do so much when you go around swooning, boss.” He scowls at Mick and tilts his head back in indignation.

“I don’t fucking _swoon_ , Mick, you ass-“

“The _bad news_ ,” Snow continues, raising her voice over his own, “is that burn is probably going to scar unless you take care of it.” Her eyes briefly flicker to where Mick is standing next to her.

“And, uh. The worse news is, uh.” He looks over to where Barry has started to move towards the foot of his bed. “We don’t know what she did to you?” Barry’s voice tilts up slightly at the end and he’s clearly nervous. Len moves his gaze away from Barry as he hears footsteps heading to the room and watches as Cisco walks in, tablet in hand.

“You got any homicidal urges, Cold? A dying need to rob a bank?” He has his fingers hovering over his tablet and an expectant look on his face like he’s actually taking notes. Len grits his teeth. Brat.

“No more than usual, Ramon.” He wants to continue, wants to sarcastically and threateningly tell Cisco that he’ll be the first to know when that changes, but. He can’t. The words get stuck in his throat, his mouth firmly shut. He clears his throat and tries again, but still nothing.

“I guess that wasn’t a good meter for you. Any other out-of-the-ordinary urges?” Cisco continues on and Len rolls his eyes and huffs, turning his head to face forward and not look at anyone in the room.

“I don’t know.” He freezes. That’s not what he wanted to say. He sees and hears Mick shift in surprise but is too frozen to look.

“Alright, well, you’re being the _least_ helpfu-“

“Shut the fuck up, kid.” Where it would normally sound threatening or annoyed, Mick just sounds distracted.

“Hey, now! It’s not my fault-“

“I said, _shut it._ ” Now it sounds vaguely threatening but still distracted and Len finally looks over to Mick, hoping his eyes don’t look as shocked and concerned as Mick’s do.

“What is it?” Barry, at least, catches on that there’s a problem. His eyes flicker back and forth between Mick and Len.

“I haven’t heard Snart seriously say he doesn’t know something in the thirty years I’ve known him.” Every head in the room whips to stare at him and he probably should be worried that his face is going to be stuck in a permanent scowl.

No one says anything for a few moments, but then Len sees Mick squint his eyes at him.

“Why is that, boss?” Len glares and opens his mouth to tell Mick to go fuck himself but it catches in his throat and his mouth is already saying something else.

“Because not knowing something proved to Lewis that I was as stupid as he said I was.” He feels the growing look of horror cross his face as his mouth _doesn’t fucking stop_. “I never wanted to give him, or anybody else, the satisfaction.” His entire body is tensed and his left wrist is burning horribly from how tight he has his hands clenched into fists. He wants to fucking strangle Mick because Mick doesn’t even bother pretending to be smug about getting Len to talk about how fucked up he is. Mick’s face is tight in anger, knowing very well how Len would never have said any of that.

“Truth.” Snow’s voice is soft in shock and Len drags his eyes away from Mick to look at her. She isn’t looking at him, though, but across the room at Cisco. “Get the MRI machine up and running. Snart, can you stand?” He nods at her as she unlocks the handcuffs and throws his legs over the side of the bed. He feels the air around him shift and sees red getting closer to him. He looks and Barry has moved around the foot of the bed and has his hands hovering near Len as if to help him. Len huffs and stands up, feeling light-headed for moment but it fades before he even takes his first step. He waits for Snow to make her way around the room and then follows her.

Mick doesn’t apologize.

That’s just how it is with them. Easy, simple. And it’s…it’s okay. It’s not like Team Flash doesn’t _know,_ but there’s knowing and then there’s _knowing_. Lisa said she told them, looking only slightly guilty when she told him. He can’t fault her, knowing the situation at the time, but they both know that it wasn’t just her story to tell. Barry actually met their father, knows how much of a piece of shit he was. So it’s fine, really.

They make it to a room in the lab with a giant machine that Cisco is pushing buttons on and Snow leads him to the bed. The rest walk into the room next to it where the computers to control and measure the machine are, Cisco joining them once he’s done.

“Alright, Snart. When was the last time you had an MRI?” He moves to the bed Snow motions to, briefly calculating.

“Thirty-two years ago.” Lewis had knocked him out with a bottle to the head and panicked, brought him to the hospital and told them that Len tripped. Lewis never brought him to the doctor after that, though. Too suspicious. He keeps his mouth locked as tight as he can and eventually the urge to tell her that subsides.

“Okay, then. Are you claustrophobic?” He shakes his head no and keeps his mouth shut. He stopped being claustrophobic when Lewis locked him in the trunk over night. “Any metal on or in your body?” He shakes his head again and mentally thanks Gideon for suggesting and being able to have the metal pins in his leg removed. “No bullets?” He rolls a look down at her and she just shrugs in response. He sighs and shakes his head again.

He leans down and takes off his boots and places them on the bed, taking off his belt next. She nods distractedly and scans her eyes over his body.

“Jeans too.” He just looks at her and sees her eyebrow raise. He sighs and undoes his pants. He’s spent too long in and out of prisons to be self-conscious of standing there in his boxer-briefs and shirt, but it isn’t exactly warm in the lab.

“Can we hurry this up a little, Doc? I want to go home.” His fists clench in the material of his jeans briefly before he puts them with his boots. Not that his introversion is exactly a hidden secret, but he hates how it makes him sound like a child.

“Any tattoos?” She pushes his shoulder until he’s forced to sit or fall over. The sheets are cold against his bare thighs. He sees her briefly look at the tattoos on his legs and when she looks back up he has an eyebrow raised at her. “Within the last year?” He smiles a little and shakes a little.

“No time to be getting tattoos when you’re busy traveling through time, Doc.”

He hears the speaker pop up by the corner of the room and looks reflexively at it.

“You got a Pacemaker, Snart?” He moves his gaze to the window into the other room where the others are and glares at Cisco.

“No, Cisco. I don’t have a fucking _Pacemaker_.” He at least has some control over the way he tells the truth. He hears the intercom pop back off and can see Cisco’s panicked look at his tone of voice. Snow’s hand appears in front of his face and he moves his head back to actually see what she’s holding. Ear plugs.

“It’s going to take about twenty minutes and it’s going to be really loud, so.” He nods and takes them, twisting them and putting them in his ears. He lays down and puts his head in the designated spot. Snow’s gentle hands move his head slightly to put mufflers next to ears, and she moves away. She comes back with a large piece of plastic. “Ready? Try not to move.” Her voice is extremely muffled but can just barely hear her. He nods and she puts the thing over his head, and once it’s locked in place she walks away, the bed moving itself into the machine.

It takes a couple of minutes but the machine turns on and it’s loud even through the ear protection.

He breathes deeply and, with every breath, tries to relax further into the bed. He counts his breathing for a while to make sure his body won’t try to fidget, but then his mind wanders. He thinks of the way that Barry yelled his name and ran to him, yellow lightening a blinding streak behind him. He thinks about how he didn’t feel the Jacobs’ hand get yanked off of his wrist and how Barry must have carefully made her hand open to let go of Len. He takes a deep breath and tries to relax against the feeling in his chest that the thought of Barry being gentle with him creates.

He doesn’t let that thought worm itself too far into his brain, knowing what he knows about Barry. That Barry is a rare kind of good, a good that makes him gentle with everyone if he can be. That Barry is so good that he’d be gentle with _Len_ of all people.

He’s getting really tired of the way Barry makes his chest hurt.

The sound cuts off and he feels his eyebrows go up in surprise but otherwise doesn’t move. The bed moves and the thing over his head is taken off once the bed is out far enough. He sits up and pulls out the earplugs and opens his mouth to get his ears to pop.

Snow is already out of the room again and Len follows her to get his things.

When he stands up straight from putting on his boots, Barry motions for them to follow him. He’s changed out of his Flash suit and Len drags his eyes down Barry’s form as he and Mick trail behind. He doesn’t get to see Barry outside of the suit much, not that he’s complaining. The tripolymer suit makes Barry look lean as hell, his runner’s build getting extremely accentuated.

That being said, there’s something to say about Barry _out_ of the suit. Barry is wearing a dark pair of jeans and a light gray shirt and Len can’t help but appreciate the hell out of the view. Barry twists around to look Len up and down in concern and it makes the shirt lift up enough that Len gets a peek of hipbone.

Nice.

Barry leads them back into the cortex and Len can see Mick looking at him out of the corner of his eye. When he turns to look, Mick raises an eyebrow at him, smirk starting to tug a little at the corners of his mouth so Len points a threatening finger at him, his face severe. Mick snorts and rolls his eyes but he knows better than to challenge Len’s unspoken threat that if _Mick says one damn word that makes Len talk about this Len will wring his neck he swears on all that’s holy._

They follow Barry into the cortex and Len looks around the lab, rubbing at the edge of the gauze around his wrist.

“Where is Jacobs now, anyway?” Barry stumbles a little, hand coming up to rub the back of his neck before he even turns around to look at Len.

“Um. Not here?” Len stops rubbing at his wrist and turns a blank look on Barry.

“Not here, as in ‘already in police custody’?” Barry’s face pinches with a guilty look.

“Not here as in Red let her get away.” Mick moves to sit down in one of the rolling chairs, completely ignoring the slack-jawed look Barry is aiming at him.

“Rory!”

“What do you mean, let her get away.” He can’t help the way his voice drops, anger making him take a stiff step towards Barry. Barry opens and closes his mouth a few times, indignant at being blamed.

“I had to get you guys away! She’d already hurt you,” he said, gesturing at Len, “Ed _shot_ me, and who knows what would have happened to Rory. I wasn’t going to let anything else happen!”

Len squints his eyes and takes a few more steps closer, looking down his nose at Barry.

“Your job, _Flash_ ,” he says through a tense jaw, his tone making Barry flinch, “was to get her into cuffs and into a cell. That was your one and _only_ job.”

Barry straightens up out of the slouch he was falling into, and takes a step towards Len, the guilt leaving his face and turning to anger.

“My job, _Snart_ , is to take care of idiots like you who let themselves get grabbed by a dangerous meta because you’re too damn stubborn to just run like any other logical person!”

“I didn’t run because you were fucking _shot._ A hero bleeding out during my heist is a little bit of a distraction. And she didn’t hurt me any more than—“

“I didn’t know that! She grabbed you and then you collapsed. It was more important to get you both to safety—“

“Tell that to Rebecca, Barry.” Barry rears back like he’s been slapped and Len would feel worse if that fear, the fear that they’re going to find another Rebecca, wasn’t eating him up inside. “Tell that to her boyfriend who never got to say goodnight.” His voice is starting to rise, and he can’t control it. “Tell that to the next poor son of a bitch that gets grabbed by her and maybe they _don’t_ make it out of the bank robbery alive—“

“It’s not like you even care!”

“Of course I fucking care!”

It goes dead quiet in the lab, his yelling echoing down the hall.

He didn’t want to fucking _say that._ He wanted to just let Barry say that, let him be angry and say something he knows Barry doesn’t mean but he _couldn’t_.

Len has one of his fists clenched, the hand shaking with how hard he’s clenching.

Barry is frozen, but after a few seconds, he visibly deflates. The anger is replaced by guilt before Barry reaches up and drags a hand down his face, sighing roughly. Len takes a few steps back and startles almost violently when a throat is delicately cleared behind him. He turns away from Barry to look at Snow as she walks into the cortex.

Barry steps forward, probably about to explain, but then Cisco comes barreling into the cortex after Snow.

“I was right!” Cisco rushes over to the console and attempts to push Mick’s rolling chair out of the way with little success. “I mean, we were right?” He continues when Snow clears her throat pointedly.

“About?” Len asks and crosses his arms, feeling entirely too exposed for showing so much emotion and truth.

“The Pre-frontal Cortex,” Cisco says, tapping a few keys on the console and bringing up two separate brain scans.

“Snart’s brain scan is on the right. Here,” Snow says, drawing a circle around the extremely lit up section of the scan, “is his Pre-frontal. Lit up just like we thought it would be.” He walks around the console and towards the T.V.s, bringing his hand up to his mouth and holding his elbow in his opposite hand. He pinches his bottom lip in thought as he looks over the scans.

It’s surreal to see the part of his own brain that’s going against his will.

“What’s the whited out sections around the edges?” Barry’s voice is curious, and Len looks over what he’s talking about.

On Len’s scan, he has bulges of white at certain parts all around his head where the ‘normal’ scan doesn’t. He feels a little sick for a moment and he knows what Snow is going to say before she even opens her mouth.

“They’re old, healed sections of his brain and skull,” she says, hesitantly and softly. He tenses up but doesn’t turn around. There’s a pause where Barry is probably looking at Snow in confusion. “Childhood head injuries. Concussions.”

There’s more silence behind. It’s heavy, oppressing, and Len takes a deep silent breath and lets it out slowly.

“Snart?” He flinches involuntarily, his last name being said while he’s thinking about all those years catching him off guard. “I normally wouldn’t ask, but since we’re dealing with a meta that can mess with the brain through electrical impulses…”

She trails off when he turns around and glares at her, shoulders almost up by his ears with tension.

“I can’t imagine that there is _anything_ in my medical background that would be relevant to this discussion, hm?” Snow doesn’t finish asking her question and he can feel his shoulders start to drop. There’s no way any of his past injuries are relevant, but he knows that he would have had to explain, probably in detail, what exactly happened to him as a child and he wasn’t in any way prepared for that.

He takes a deep breath and forces his shoulders to relax.

“Plus, in our line of work head injuries are just part of the job. Mick’s had two concussions in the last two months.” Mick gives him the middle finger and he grins, remembering Mick’s pissed off complaining when Gideon said she couldn’t heal Mick’s nose until it was pushed back into place.

“What?!” Snow’s voice goes a little shrill as she stomps over to where Mick is sitting, taking a pen light out from her lap coat pocket and physically pushing back Mick’s head and pulling back his eyelid, checking his pupils.

That gets Barry laughing and Len sighs but he still doesn’t look over at him.

He wouldn’t be able to stand the look he knows Barry would give him.

Instead, he watches as Mick swats at Snow’s hands to get her to let go of his face more delicately than Len thinks he’s ever seen Mick handle anything other than a flame. He lets them scuffle for a few more seconds while he watches Mick and the way the harsh lines on his face don’t look so mean as he looks up at Snow from the chair.

“Okay, children. Time to put on our big kid pants. What do we do now?” Snow lets go of Mick’s head with a glare as Mick grins at winning their childish scuffle.

“Well, Cait will run some blood tests and we may end up taking a few more scans?” Cisco looks over at Snow in question and she huffs as she shoves her pen light back into her pocket.

“After that, we can start to figure out a way to reverse it,” Barry says, arms crossed and shrugging. Len tilts his head back and squints at him.

“How do we know if it needs to be reversed?” The three scientists look at him in confusion and he rolls his eyes. “The bank robbers. They didn’t try to continue the heist after they were caught.”

Cisco and Snow look at Barry and he gives them a glare before rubbing his face and sighing.

“We think that’s because they accomplished their mission.”

Len walks towards the console and spreads his hands wide on it, leaning his weight forward to lock eyes with Barry.

“Explain, _Flash_.” Barry rubs at his mouth before stutters a step forward.

“Their mission was to rob the bank. They did that, and then her control on them stopped.” Barry pauses and Len lifts a hand to make an impatient gesture for him to continue. “We thought it might be time-based, at first, until—until Rebecca.”

Len sniffs and taps his fingers a few times, feeling slightly bad for the guilty look Barry shoots at him. He was pissed off before, mad that Jacobs got away, but he shouldn’t have thrown that back at Barry.

“If there was a time limit on what she does to someone…It took _time_ to do what Rebecca did to herself—“

“What Jacobs did to _her,_ ” Len snaps, hands curling into fists against the table. Barry pauses, shocked, but ultimately nods.

“It takes time to do something like that. So we don’t think that it’s time. It wouldn’t make sense for it to be distance either, so…um.” Barry looks at Cisco and Caitlin before looking back at Len hesitantly. Like he really doesn’t want to say what he’s about to. Len stands from his lean and crosses his arms. “We think that it’s about accomplishing the ‘mission’ she gives you.”

Barry squints his eyes as if to prepare for Len to yell, but Len just furrows his eyebrows in confusion.

“I don’t understand.” His voice is flat and he scowls as Barry looks startled and looks at Mick.

“Oh wow, yeah. It’s going to take a while to get used to him saying he doesn’t know something.”

“You’re telling me, Red. I’ve been with this cagey bastard for so long, I didn’t think he could physically say something like that.” Len scowls harder and glares at Mick as Barry huffs out a laugh.

“Right. Um. So, the robbers completed their mission, and they were free. Rebecca…didn’t. She clearly fought her mission, so she never stopped being affected by Jacobs powers.”

Okay, Len can see his point. He doesn’t like it, though. Doesn’t like what it means for him.

“Now, as far as we can tell, you don’t really have a direct mission.” Len tilts his head and gives Barry a look.

“Well, clearly I do.” Cisco nods and steps closer to Barry, taking over the explanation.

“Exactly! You’re not trying to kill someone or rob something, though. You’re just stuck telling the truth. So? Maybe that’s your mission.” Len tenses and crosses his arms, really hating that idea.

“My mission is to tell the truth. That’s it.” They all nod at him. “Then how the _fuck_ do I complete my mission?!” He steps forward and drops his arms, hands clenched by his sides. Cisco takes a step back out of instinct even though the console still blocked Len from the rest of them.

“We…don’t know. I don’t think you can. So we have to figure out a way to reverse it,” Snow says, nails tapping nervously on her tablet. “You probably won’t be the only one she gives an incompletable mission to. So, I’m sorry Snart, but I think you’re going to have to be our guinea pig until we can figure out how to reverse this.”

Len clenches his jaw and breathes out heavily through his nose. He curses Jacobs in his head, and curses Team Flash a little, too.

Of course, it couldn’t have been one of the goody-two-shoes that got whammied. It had to be Len who made his career, his _life_ , around his ability to lie.

“This isn’t… good. I need to be able to lie and not being able to is going to cause a lot of trouble for me. The longer I’m like this, the more dangerous it is.” He lets out a rough sigh. “But as long as we can stop her, hopefully before she hurts someone else, I’ll do whatever I can to help. No matter how long it takes.” There’s a long silence and Len doesn’t look at any of them as he scowls.

If Len hadn’t lost the ability to be embarrassed years ago, this would the most embarrassing thing that could possibly happen to him.

Out of the corner of his eye, Barry looks like his face is about to split in half with how hard he’s grinning. Len growls and stomps towards one of the side labs.

“Come take my blood, doc. Let’s get this shit over with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not a neurologist nor do I know really anything about science really so just....take the sciencey stuff with a grain of salt lol


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! There are some triggering things in this chapter, so please check the notes at the bottom for more information!

“I’m going to take a few vials now but after that, I think we need to get an understanding of how strict your orders are,” Snow says as she follows Len into the room. He sighs and sits down on one of the stools and hooks the heels of his boots on the bottom rung.

“And what would that exactly entail, Doctor Snow?” He spins his seat back and forth. She doesn’t answer him but instead hunches over a case of vials, picking up a few and checking the label. He gets the feeling that she’s avoiding the question but decides to wait her out. He continues to spin until her hand snaps out and grabs the underside of the stool, halting his movement. He meets her glare but stops, and she lets go with a sigh and puts the vials down on the table before walking off, probably to find a needle.

“I think we should start with small lies. White lies, lies of omissions, things like that.” He tenses and sits up straighter. She returns, needle in a new package in hand and a pair of rubber gloves on.

“And after that?” he asks while taking off his jacket and draping it over his lap. She stretches the strand of rubber while she waits for him to push up his sleeve. She ties it around his biceps and brushes a finger along the vein.

“Make a fist, please. After that, we’ll have to try and test your ability to not tell the truth.” She doesn’t look at him while she cleans his arm with the alcohol wipe and opening the needle. He watches as she works, as she straightens out the tubing and presses the needle against his skin. She meets his eyes briefly and he nods, pursing his lips slightly at the pain when she presses the needle in.

“What do you mean? I thought trying to lie was not telling the truth.” She starts filling up one of the vials and he looks away.

“I meant that I wanted to test and see how long you can go without answering. How long you can just, not answer. I think, for that, we’ll start with testing an indirect question, maybe something that you wouldn’t normally have to answer like a rhetorical question, and then see how long you can avoid answering a direct question.”

He watches Cisco and Barry talk through the glass, letting himself be distracted by Cisco’s flailing motions and the way Barry laughs. Snow sounded hesitant like there was something else and he thinks he knows what.

“You want to test that by asking me something you know I would never answer normally, don’t you?” She replaces the filled vial with an empty one, tugs off the piece of rubber around his arm, and sighs.

“I know this isn’t,” she says, pausing and biting her lip. “This isn’t ideal, and I _am_ sorry, Snart.” He clenches his other fist in his jacket but relaxes it after a moment and a sigh.

“I know. This is important, and believe me when I say that I’ve come to understand sacrifice for the greater good.” She looks at him from under her lashes, head ducked to focus on the vials. She finishes up with the last vial and pulls the needle from his arm and tosses it in a hazard bin, putting pressure on his with some gauze. She tells him to hold it there, and he does until she comes back with a band-aid. She takes the gauze away and tosses it into the same bin she threw the needle in and puts the band-aid on.

She pulls off her gloves and he stares down at the bandage.

Cute.

He can’t remember the last time he wore a band-aid.

He looks up when he sees a motion in the other room and sees Mick heading towards them.

“You’re going to hear some things from me you never wanted to know.” She looks like she wants to apologize again, but just nods instead. She startles when Mick opens the door to the room and peeks in.

“She done torturing you in here, boss?” Len smirks as he tugs down his sleeve and tosses his jacket onto the bed from his position on the stool.

“Not even close. It’s only just starting, apparently.” Snow shoots him a look that he thinks is supposed to be a glare but just comes across as her trying to not look guilty. She walks towards the door and shoos Mick back.

“Get out. I need to test him and it’ll be easier if he doesn’t have an audience.” Mick doesn’t move back but just cocks his head to the side slightly, looking down at her.

“Testing what, exactly?” She puts her hands on her hips and all Len can see of her is her back but, by the amused look on Mick’s face, he’s sure that she has conjured up one of her determined, no-nonsense doctor masks.

“I’m going to test to see what happens if we try and get him to lie.” Mick pushes further into the room as Snow explains to Mick what she had told Len.

“Then you’ll want my help, doc. No one knows him better than me. Except for his sister, but,” Mick glances behind him at Cisco in the main room. “I don’t think you want _her_ here.” Snow eyes him suspiciously but seems to decide that he’s being sincere and nods.

“Fine. We’ll start off easy. If it’s okay, I’d like to put a few things on you to record your vitals,” she says, her tone turning the sentence from a request to a demand. Len nods and Snow grabs what she needs, setting it all up to machines.

It’s not until she’s told him to lift his shirt so she could put nodes on his chest to measure his heart rate that she starts to look a little shifty again.

“What is it?” She bites her lip while she carefully sticks the wireless nodes to his chest.

“I think that it would be best if we recorded it.” Len sits up straight, tensing almost immediately. He opens his mouth to tell her no, to tell her to fuck off, but he thinks about it and deflates.

“So you can go over the questions and how I respond to them later.” She nods and he sighs.

Right as she’s sticking the last node to his chest, Barry and Cisco push their way in through the door.

Cisco barely reacts, just walks over to help Snow with the machines, but Barry.

Barry is staring at his chest and his heart starts to pound at the look on Barry’s face. He swallows but forces his face into a blank expression as he allows his shirt to drop back into place. Barry startles a little and meets Len’s eyes as he raises an eyebrow at Barry. He goes red almost immediately, a beautiful flush that crosses his cheeks and the tips of his ears. He moves towards Cisco and Snow and casually leans against the table but doesn’t look over at Len again.

Fascinating.

Len looks over at Mick, eyebrow still raised and gets an eyebrow raised back. At least he isn’t the only one confused.

Snow clips something to his pointer finger as she explains to the others her plan while Cisco taps away at his tablet. He moves around Snow until he’s in front of Len and puts the tablet down on the table next to him. Brought up on the screen is the program for recording and Snow gets his current vitals up on the computer’s wide screen.

As he watches his heartbeat, he feels incredibly exposed. Something about having a room full of people being able to see his heart rate rankling him.

“I hope you don’t mind if Cisco and Barry stay,” Snow says, a more questioning tone to her voice this time.

He wants to roll his eyes because, yeah, sure, what this plan needs is a fucking audience and he opens his mouth to say that.

“I trust them,” is what he says instead and has never wanted the ability to pull words back more than right now.

The whole room seems to move at once.

Cisco and Snow’s heads snap to look at him while both Mick and Barry straighten up out of their slouches. He squeezes his eyes shut and can feel the way a frown makes its way onto his face.

“Let’s just get this over with. Please.” When he opens his eyes again, everyone has returned to their previous positions.

“Okay, Snart. We’ll start off easy, and go from there. Ready?” He nods at Snow and she holds up, her phone, time obvious on the face. “Now, round up. What time is it?”

The time reads that it’s 5:17 am. He thinks to himself that it’s 5:20. It’s 5:20. It’s—

“It’s 5:17.” He scowls but reminds himself that it’s not worth getting pissed off about this right now.

They still have a lot more testing to do.

“What color is this pen?” It’s blue. It’s blue. It’s blue, it’s blue, it’s fucking _blue._

“Black,” he says through gritted teeth, trying to get the wrong answer out. Snow jots something down and looks at his vitals, which haven’t changed that much.

“Okay. Now I want you to lie by omission. Walk out to the cortex and take something from the desk. When you come back, I’ll ask you what you were doing—“

“And I should try to only tell you a part of it.” She nods and he stands from the stool. He pushes past them, brushes against Cisco, goes through the door and walks towards the console. He looks at the items and sees one that makes him grin. He quickly grabs it and tucks it into his back pocket. He walks back towards the others and sits back down on the stool, spinning it a little again.

“He gets even a little chance to steal something and he’s practically glowing,” Cisco mutters, getting a glare from Len and, surprisingly, Barry. Although, he probably shouldn’t be that surprised.

Cisco meets Barry’s glare with a look of his own that Len can’t decipher but it makes Barry duck his head.

“Snart. What were you just doing?” He looks away from the way Barry’s hair falls into his face and determinedly meets Snow’s eyes.

“I walked to the console.” He clenches his jaw and tries to hold it back. “And I grabbed Barry’s phone,” he grinds out, bringing his hand up to his face, trying to resist the urge to cover his mouth. Barry laughs a little and walks towards him with his hand out.

“Okay, next—“ Snow stops when Mick holds his hand up at her, looking pointedly at Len, which makes Barry stop as well.

Len’s whole body is tensed up and his heart rate starts to pick up as he tries really hard not to talk. It’s not like it matters, but he needs to see if he can.

“And I took Cisco’s wallet before I walked out.”

“Hey!” Cisco immediately starts patting at his pockets and Barry’s head tilts back and he laughs loudly.

Len barely hears the others laughing because he’s so distracted by the beautiful length of Barry’s neck. He loves making Barry laugh, loves seeing the way his lips stretch in a grin. He swallows and looks away as Cisco walks towards him with his hand out.

His heart rate on the monitor is still raised and he hopes they all think it’s from the strain of trying to hold back the truth.

He pulls the wallet out of his back pocket and tosses it at Cisco, who catches it with the exact lack of grace that Len imagined.

Barry puts his hands on Cisco’s shoulders and pulls him to the side so he can get closer. Len pulls the phone from his other back pocket and holds it out. Barry takes it from him and when their fingers brush, he’s sure to keep his breathing even as Barry bites his lip around a smile.

Snow clears her throat, making Barry jump and flush, but when Len looks over to her, she’s staring at him.

“Next question.” Barry backs away, bringing a hand up to rub the back of his neck. “I’m going to ask the room a general question, nothing directly at Snart. Feel free to answer, it might help it feel like Snart doesn’t have to answer.”

She looks at Len and waits until he nods.

“Okay. First question. What is your favorite color?” She looks at everyone except Len, trying to enforce the idea that he doesn’t need to answer.

“Purple,” Cisco says, fidgeting slightly and Len squints his eyes at him, wondering why Cisco would lie about his favorite color of all things.

“Green,” Barry says while Len is still staring at Cisco, so he almost misses the way Barry looked at him and then quickly away.

“Black.” Len rolls his eyes.

“Black is a shade, Mick, not a color.”

“Does it look like I care? What is this, kindergarten?” Len sighs but when there’s silence, he sits up straighter. They all stare at him in shock.

“You don’t have to answer indirect questions,” Snow says, writing it down. “Good. Now, how about this? What are each of your favorite drinks?”

“Chocolate milkshake.”All eyes snap to him and he groans, putting his head down into his hands.

“Captain Cold’s favorite drink, in the whole world, is a _chocolate milkshake_?” He lifts his head to growl at Cisco who takes a step back, raising his hands up in feigned defense.

“Oh yeah, he loves chocolate,” Mick says while Len growls at him to shut the fuck up. “He even likes chocolate Italian ices, the freak.” Cisco and Barry look at each other with matching shit-eating grins and Len is a little annoyed that he doesn’t find it as aggravating as he probably should.

“Fascinating. So you don’t have to answer a broad question, but a broad question that _includes_ you, you have to answer.” Snow looks to Cisco who nods and takes out his phone. “We’re going to time this one, now. Try not to answer as long as you can, okay?” Len nods.

While they’re setting up the timing, he looks over to where Mick is standing off to the side, arms crossed. Mick tenses up, realizing that this is about to get rough.

“I’ll ask ‘em, doc,” Mick says, uncrossing his arms and walking over to where Snow is stationed and she looks up at him in confusion.

“But—“

“Just tell me what kind of questions you want him to _not_ answer,” Mick says and puts a hand on Snow’s elbow to lead her just outside the room to talk, the door swinging closed behind them. Len watches in interest as Mick gently takes Snow’s pad and pen from her hands and jots down what they’re talking about.

“Hey.” He doesn’t physically jump, but he tenses at the voice suddenly coming from right next to him. He looks up to see Barry, head ducked and looking for all the world like a kid that just came from a timeout.

“Yes?” He asks, raising an eyebrow when Barry finally looks up and meets his eyes.

“I just—“ he sighs, cutting himself off. “I just wanted to apologize. For yelling at you. And for saying that you didn’t care.” Len has both eyebrows raised now. “I know you care,” he says softly. Len swallows and looks away and wants to deny it but he fucking _can’t_.

“Yeah, well,” he says, clearing his throat. “I’m sorry, too.” He sees Cisco’s head turn towards them dramatically and he resists the urge to roll his eyes. “I shouldn’t have brought Rebecca up. I know you only did what you thought was right.” He scowls and can’t look at Barry right away.

When Barry doesn’t say anything, Len looks up at him and finds him watching Len’s face intently, like he’s looking for something. He seems to find something there because a pleased, almost shocked, smile starts to form on his face.

The heart monitor behind Barry beeps as his heart rate spikes slightly and when Barry turns around to look at it, concerned, Len ducks his head and has never been more thankful for losing the ability to blush thirty some odd years ago.

Nor has he ever been more thankful for Mick. He and Snow come back into the room, both faces carefully blank.

“Okay. We’re ready if you are, Snart.” Barry and Cisco look at each other uncertainly. “You two can stay, but if I tell you to leave, you’d better go without any questions.” They both nod at Snow, but she stares before pointing in-between them. “If you even _think_ about eavesdropping after I’ve kicked you out, I’ll let Rory have fun with you.” They both look at Mick in panic.

Mick just grins.

“I want you on a different floor if that’s what it takes,” she says and they both nod frantically. She moves until she’s next to Len and Mick is standing in front of him.

He smirks up at Mick, straightening up and tilting his head, trying to get a look at what’s written on the page. Mick tilts the pad of paper towards himself to hide the page with an unamused look before reaching out and smacking Len on the back of the head with it. Len glares up at him and gets a sarcastic grin in response.

“Focus, Snart.”He rolls his head to look at the doctor before giving her a lazy salute.

“Aye, aye, Captain.” She looks ready to smack him across the head, too, but settles for smacking Cisco’s arm when he snorts.

She turns a little so she can see the screen with his vitals and grabs the timer before glancing over at him. He nods and tilts his head back to stare up at Mick.

“Try and keep your mouth shut, for once.” He swipes out towards Mick who simply leans back slightly out of his reach. “What did you really do with that McReedy bastard’s share?”

Len’s surprised by the lack of preamble and is responding before he even fully processes the question.

“I gave it to the abuse shelters on 5th and on Congress.” His mouth closes with a snap, the click of his teeth audible as is the click of Snow stopping the timer. He glares up at Mick who just smirks and looks back down at the paper.

Len braces himself for the rest of the questions, ready to fight to stay quiet.

“Why did you kill Lewis?” He clenches his teeth and looks away from all of them, trying to focus on keeping it in.

“For revenge for hurting Lisa,” he says with a gasp before biting his lip to keep the rest of it in. He makes the mistake of looking quickly at Barry, and the look of concern on his face distracts Len just long enough. “And so I could finally be safe from him.” He gulps and looks over at his vitals and how his heart rate had spiked a little and was now coming back down.

There’s a pause in the questioning until his heart rate settles again.

“What wouldn’t you do for Lisa?”

“Nothing,” he answers easily his voice dropping and he can feel the way his face twists, brows furrowing, expression intensifying. He waits for there to be more, but he isn’t forced to talk more. He expected a forced explanation, but he guesses that his answer was enough.

Nothing.

There wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for his sister.

“Why did you let yourself get killed by the Oculus?”

There’s the sound of someone sucking in a quick breath and when he looks, it’s Barry whose eyes are wide and he’s staring at Len like he needs to hear the answer.

Len bites harshly down on his lower lip and brings a hand up to cover his mouth. He starts bouncing his leg, stool rocking slightly with the movement. He can feel his heartbeat getting fast and the machine starts to beep. His head starts to hurt a little.

“I couldn’t let you die,” he spits out. “I couldn’t have lived knowing that you died when I could have saved you,” he says in a rush before clamping his mouth closed again.

He’s able to resist for only a few seconds.

“And I—“ he tries to cut himself off and rubs at the pain in his temples with a grunt. “And I wanted to die a hero.”

He squeezes his eyes almost painfully shut, and there’s nothing but silence in the lab around him, even the heart rate monitor going quiet.

When he finally gets up the courage, he opens his eyes and risks a look at Barry.

Instead of the happy or, heaven forbid, _proud_  expression he’s expecting, Barry’s face is completely unreadable, a look in his eyes that Len’s never seen before.

Mick waits until Len looks at him before asking the next question.

“Why did you really agree to help Team Flash with this case?”

A shocked look crosses his face at the question and he already knows the answer, knows exactly what the truth is, and he clenches his jaw.

He covers his mouth and curls his head towards his chest, trying to keep it in. There’s a high pitched noise that is annoying and making his head hurt. It takes him a few seconds to realize that the high pitched noise is him, that he’s whining like a wounded animal.

The heart monitor starts to beep almost frantically but he can barely hear it over the pounding in his head. All the noise and pain is getting too much and he moves his hands from his mouth to cover his ears.

He starts tasting blood around the time that he feels something dripping down his face and he realizes that he’s scratched gouges into the side of his face.

Hands grab his wrists and pull them away from his face but he struggles, fighting to get back at his pounding head, fighting to stop the pain.

There’s a loud noise that makes him flinch and he can’t make out what it is for a few more seconds.

“—art! Snart! Mick, get his hands away from his—“

“I’m _tryin’,_ doc!”

“Snart! You’re hurting yourself, you need to _calm_ down—shit!” The beeping gets more frantic and Len’s chest starts to hurt.

“What’s happening?!” Len leans away from the shout, the sound making him nauseous with pain, and he tries to use his body weight to pull his arms out of the grip they’re in.

“If we don’t calm him down, he’s going to have a heart attack,” someone says, panic making their voice shake.

“Shit! Boss, just say it. Just spit it out,” someone else says, the someone whose voice is close and makes him flinch in pain.

“Sna—Leonard! Leonard, please. No one else is here, it’s just me and Mick. It’s _alrigh—_ “

“For Barry! To protect Barry!” It’s not until the pain starts to lessen, that the pounding in his head starts to lessen that he realizes that that’s _him_ yelling. He can’t stop himself, the pain too great and he’s still tugging on the grip around his wrists, albeit with way less strength than before. He bites down on his lip, still trying to keep it in.

“Leonard, _please_!” He flinches away from the yell, his mouth opening in surprise.

“Because I _love_ him!”

The pain stops. The pounding in his head completely disappears.

The blood rushing in his ears is still loud, and he realizes he’s panting, gasping for air. He’s collapsed forward, head resting on his outstretched arms that are still held up by the tight grip on his wrists.

He just breathes and listens to the sound of the heart monitor, still frantically beeping but getting slower. It’s the only sound in the room until it stops beeping in warning and his heart rate returns to a somewhat normal level, if not a little fast.

By the time he hears movement, he’s started to shake from the drop in adrenaline.

He’s too tired to flinch from the gentle hand that touches his chin, lifting his head. He obeys when someone tells him to open his eyes and is rewarded with a painfully bright light. He squeezes his eyes shut and pulls his face out of the gentle hand with a whine.

“I know, I know it hurts,” a voice murmurs. He can’t imagine what he looks like to elicit a sympathetic response like that and he frowns. The hand gently grabs his chin again and he allows it this time, only leaning away from it a little when the light is flashed in his eyes. The hand lets go and he hides his face against his bicep.

“Can you get him up?” There’s a grunt to the softly asked question and then the hands on his wrists are pulling. He tugs a little but goes when a hand settles in-between his shoulder blades, steadying him.

He stands shakily and doesn’t open his eyes as he’s lead by his wrists across the room. He’s turned and then the grip on his wrists leaves and he hisses at how his left wrist feels like it’s on fire, the burning making him grit his teeth.

Big hands press down on his shoulders and he sits on a bed, the hand on his back keeping him from falling backward. Both sets of hands leave him and then he can see the light dim from behind his eyelids and a bottle is being pressed into his right hand with the instruction to drink.

He takes a few small sips, swishing the water in his mouth when he remembers that it tastes like copper. When he’s had a few more bigger swigs, he closes the bottle and puts it gently on the bed next to him.

He clears his throat and cracks his eyes open, ready to shut them again if it’s too bright.

The overhead lights are all turned off, the only light in the room coming from the cortex. He lets his eyes open all the way and looks up into Mick’s concerned expression.

Oh.

This is bad.

Snow appears in his line of sight and puts some things down on the bed. She starts by lifting his shirt to get the nodes off and he lets her, holds his shirt up to make it easier. When she tells him he can put his shirt down, he does and slumps tiredly. She cleans under his nose, wipe coming back red and he realizes that he was tasting blood because he’d gotten a nosebleed.

He hisses when she cleans his temples with alcohol.

“They’re too deep for me to not cover them,” she warns softly and he doesn’t flinch when she sticks bandages on both temples. “Give me your hand.”

He has to think about what hand she’s asking for before he raises his left hand. She unwraps the bandages that had gotten messed up in the struggle and he hisses and grits his teeth as it pulls away from the skin. His lip curls as he sees the burned skin. Not as bad as it could’ve been.

She cleans it gently before rewrapping it and he holds back his wince of pain. She mumbles an apology and he shrugs.

By the time Snow tugs her rolling stool a little closer with a notepad, his shaking has gone down.

“I would like to know what just happened, Leonard.” He rubs his fingers along the edge of the bandaging, rolling the edge a little.

“It hurt,” he admits and he doesn’t know if it’s from exhaustion or from force that he says it honestly. “Everything was so loud and hurt so bad. I wanted to make it stop,” he says, softly at the end, as he brings a hand up to gently touch the edge of the bandages on his face.

He stares at his lap as he drops his hand back down. He manages to lift his head and look at Snow, looking far more concerned about him than she ever normally would be.

He doesn’t know how he feels about that.

“I guess we know how Rebecca felt now. I would have kept…digging until it stopped.” Her eyes flicker over to Mick who looks back.

“Or until you died,” she says matter of factly and he looks at her before nodding.

“Or until I died.” She writes something down on her notepad and absently tapping the tablet on the table to stop the recording. He picks up the water to take a few more sips, his throat sore from whatever godawful, pathetic noises he was making.

He stands up and clears his throat, making Snow look up from her note-taking.

“Since this has been thoroughly traumatic for everyone involved,” he says, moving towards where his jacket is, “if you have no other questions, I would really like to go home now.”

She nods and stands as he puts his jacket back on, walking them both out into the cortex.

Mick has already turned the corner when Snow touches Len’s elbow, making him pause and look down at her.

“I’m sorry, Leonard,” she says gently and he smirks tiredly down at her before he nods and walks away, neither one of them needing to say what she’s sorry for.

He hears the ding of the elevator from down the hall and he almost groans out.

Barry and Cisco come out, both looking around until Barry sees Len and starts to jog over.

“Snart!” Len flinches at the sound level and he bounces his hand up and down, trying to communicate to Barry to calm the _fuck_ down.

Barry slows down to a walk as he gets closer to Len.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, voice a lot quieter. “How’re you feeling?” Len glares at him a little and Barry ducks his head sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Like refried shit, Barry.”

“Right, yeah. Sorry.” Len can’t tell if Barry is apologizing for how he feels, for asking a stupid question, or for the fact that he made Len tell the truth.

Knowing Barry, probably all three.

“You going home?” Len frowns and nods, turning towards where he’s supposed to be heading, really needing to be away from here.

He’s about to just start walking away when Barry wraps a gentle hand around his bicep.

Len sucks in a harsh breath, the heat of Barry’s hand through the layers of clothes feeling almost too good. He looks down at the hand and follows the arm up until he’s looking into Barry’s stupidly earnest face.

“Thank you, Snart. Honestly.” It takes a second but Len smirks at the irony of the statement, making Barry roll his eyes good-naturedly.

“You’re very welcome, Barry. _Honestly_.” Barry smiles a little and squeezes his bicep and Len has to fight the stupid and embarrassing urge to flex.

“Get some rest, Captain,” he says, dropping his hold and taking a step back towards the cortex. Len gives him a two-fingered salute and turns on his heel, walking out of the Labs without looking back.

 

He sleeps for ten hours and when he wakes up, Mick doesn’t say anything to him, doesn’t _ask_ him anything. He gives Len his space and Len’s so grateful that he buys Mick a new zippo.

It has flames on the sides.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning (and please let me know if you think I should add anything else):
> 
> There are mentions of self-harm in this chapter. It's not described, but it is there, and it's mentioned again while they are being cleaned and bandaged. It starts around "He covers his mouth and curls his head..." and ends a little before "There’s a loud noise that makes him flinch..."  
> It's mentioned again for only a line or two after Caitlin is cleaning Len's nose.
> 
>  
> 
> If you wanted to avoid it but still want to know, or if you want to know if you need to avoid it:
> 
> Len scratches himself on his face without realizing it until he bleeds.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a notice: I changed the character tags on this fic. I started this fic before certain characters showed up or left, so I updated it
> 
> ALSO: At the end of this fic, I want to ask y'all if you have a scene/chapter that you'd want to see from Barry's P.O.V. and I think I'll choose the top one or two. So keep that in mind if that's something you guys would want! You can comment here or message me on tumblr (sugar-haus.tumblr.com)  
> <3
> 
> edit: fixed the formatting, thank you to Thette!

“Huh,” he says, turning his head to the side to see the scratches on his face in the mirror. They weren’t as bad as he thought they would be, as deep as they could have been.

“‘Huh’ what?” He hears from the living room and he watches his own eyes squint in confusion. He throws his bandages in the bathroom garbage before making his way towards the voice. He passes the kitchen where Mick has his back turned, making a sandwich, and stops in the entrance to the living room.

Sara is lounging on their couch with her feet up on the back of it, flipping through a weapons magazine that he’s not entirely sure she didn’t bring with her. He sighs and, without looking away from her, yells back into the kitchen.

“Mick! Why the hell did you let Sara in here?” She doesn’t look away from her magazine but still raises an eyebrow at him.

“You think closing the door in her face would stop her?” Mick asks, walking past him and taking a bite of his sandwich. He sits down on the couch, making Sara bounce slightly, and Len rubs at his forehead.

“Fine. Then I guess the question is, why the hell _are_ you here, Sara?”

“Well,” she says, turning the page quickly, “I called Mick because you weren’t answering your phone.

“It’s off,” he says, sighing.

“I asked him how the whole Flash team-up was going and if you guys would be wrapped up and ready to leave in a few days.” Len glares at Mick who doesn’t even both to look at him, but just reaches over to grab the remote and turn the T.V. on. “And imagine my surprise when he tells me that we’re going to have to extend our vacation and won’t tell me _why._ ”

She finally closes the magazine and looks across the room at him.

“So you took the first train over to, what? Snoop on us?” He crosses his arms and glares at her.She gives him a look and tosses the magazine onto the coffee table before swinging her feet around Mick’s head until they’re on the ground. She stands and walks until he has to tilt his head slightly down to continue looking at her, crossing her arms.

“What did you do with my set of Japanese throwing knives?”

“I hid them under the floor panel in the back left corner of my room on the ship.” There’s a beat of silence before he scowls and she hums as if he just proved her point.

“See, I didn’t come all the way here to _snoop_ on you, Leonard. I was concerned about my team members and my _friends_ ,” she says as she looks between him and Mick. He scans over her face, and even though he knows she could lie to him if she wanted to, he can tell she’s being genuine.

Ugh. He never had to worry about this many people _caring_ before he and Mick went off with the Legends. It’s so annoying.

He rolls his eyes and she just grins in response and claps her hands together once.

“Alright, well I think it’s time to get back to work. Don’t you, boys?” She grabs her coat from over the back of the couch and heads towards the door. Len looks to the ceiling for strength as he hears Mick chuckle and start to get off the couch.

He rolls his shoulders and tries to mentally prepare himself for going back to the labs, to go back to Team Flash.

“Oh and,” Sara says, pausing with their front door open, “in a fit of being so worried for you, I called in the rest of the team.”

Len freezes before glaring at Sara, fists clenched, while her smile turns into a smirk.

“They’ll meet us at the labs.”

She walks out of the apartment, leaving the door open and Mick laughing so hard he has to sit back down.

 

He remembers having a feeling of fondness when he’d walked into the labs and heard Team Flash arguing with themselves a week ago.

That feeling is completely replaced with annoyance, now.

He can hear two voices going back and forth over the sound of his and Mick’s boots, and as they reach the archway, there’s the sound of his team laughing.

He makes sure he has a scowl on his face before walking in after Mick, hoping that his expression is enough that this team of _assholes_ won’t try and fuck with him.

Sara still owes him $200, and now he’s thinking of throwing in that katana she’s so fond of. He deserves it after this shit.

His expression does not, in fact, stop his team from taking one look at him and bursting out into laughter. Sara snickers from behind her hand from her place on the other side of Team Flash, who are all staring at the Legends with their mouths slightly open. It takes him a second until he realizes that they’re actually in shock that the Legends are laughing in the face of _Captain Cold_. It makes him feel slightly better, knowing at least _some_ people still have a healthy fear of him.

He stops a little distance from both teams, in between them, crosses his arms and cocks his hip out.

“Yeah, laugh it up, assholes.” They all chuckle, and Mick snorts as he intimidates Cisco out of one of the rolling chairs. Len scowls harder and turns his head away, annoyed. He catches sight of Barry, shocked look replaced with a small smile as he looks at the Legends.

“We all came to help as soon as Sara called us,” Zari says, her lips pursed in the way that he knows she’s hiding a grin and he glares at her.

“Oh yes, I’m sure _helping_ is what dragged you all to Central City,” he says sourly, but his shoulders are relaxing slightly, knowing that they’re going to have a lot more help with Jacobs.

“Aw, c’mon. We’re totally here for you, buddy,” Nate says and takes a step closer to grip Len’s shoulder in camaraderie. Len bares his teeth at him and only gets a shit eating grin in response as Nate shakes his shoulder slightly.

“Holy shit,” Cisco breathes out from across the room, making Nate drop his hand finally. “How do you do that?” He’s staring at Nate in awe which makes some of the Legends laugh.

“Do what?” Nate asks around a grin. Cisco waves a hand between the Legends, Mick, Nate, and Len, making Len raise an eyebrow.

“You know, all _that_ , without worrying you’re going to lose a fucking hand?” Cisco’s eyes skitter nervously to Len again and he has to bite the inside of his lip to keep his face neutral despite wanting to give Cisco a teeth-baring grin.

“It’s kind of hard to be afraid of someone when you’ve seen them asleep on the kitchen table,” Ray says, making Sara snort without even looking up from texting.

“We were on a mission in medieval Bangladesh for _three days_ ,” Len admits through gritted teeth,uncrossing his arms and clenching his fists. “I was _tired_.”

“He was face down on the table, hugging a cup of coffee,” Ray continues as if Len hadn’t spoken at all. His tone is the same one that someone would use when describing what particularly cute thing their cat had done that morning.

He’s going to strangle Ray in his sleep.

“I got Gideon to take a picture.” Ray reaches for his back pocket and takes out his phone.

Screw waiting until he’s asleep. He’s going to strangle Ray _now_. It’s bad enough he showed the picture to their newest members while Len was still floating around in space and time.

He growls and crosses the space between him and Ray in three long strides, hands up to either actually strangle Ray or wrestle the phone from him. He honestly hasn’t decided yet.

Ray takes step back before comically scrunching down and hiding behind Amaya who just rolls her eyes. An arm wraps around his middle, stopping him from grabbing at Ray around Amaya. He grabs the arm automatically, squeezing the wrist until a normal person would have called uncle but the person just drags him back to his original spot.

“Alright, children. Enough,” Sara says, slightly muffled and from directly behind him as the rest of the Legends laugh, Mick being the loudest. Len must tense because Sara bodily shakes him. “I said _enough_ , Leonard!” Ray stands back up, holding his hands up in surrender that would be more satisfying if not for the smile Ray was trying to hold back.

Sara finally lets him go and he fixes his jacket, huffing. He opens his mouth a few times, automatically trying to bring up a threat but getting only a closed throat for his trouble.

“Insert appropriately dramatic and villainous threat here?” Cisco says cautiously, and Len cuts his glare quickly to him before pointing at Ray.

“I know where you sleep, Raymond.” Ray just rolls his eyes, grin finally coming out.

“I know you do, buddy.”

Sara sighs and steps into the middle and waves her hand in the vague direction of the Legends.

“Team Flash, I introduce to you,” she says, sighing heavily, “The Legends when the world isn’t in danger of being destroyed.

“Technically—“

“ _Can it_ , Heywood.” Sara shoots Nate a glare that makes him drop the finger he had raised.

Len sneaks a quick look at Barry to see him watching them all fondly. He lets his eyes scan Barry’s face, settling on the curve of his soft smile, before looking at Cisco.

Cisco, who is squinting at him like he’s never seen Len before. Len tilts his head back challengingly, but they’re both startled out of their staring contest by Mick clapping his gloved hands together.

“Here’s the deal. Caroline Jacobs, struck by lightning. Now she controls people with her mind. We tried to grab her, she grabbed Snart instead. Now he’s stuck tellin’ the truth. Also, someone's dead.” The Legends stare at Mick in silence until Snow rolls her eyes and steps forward.

“If someone doesn’t do what she wants, they’re in extreme pain. To the point that they’ll start…hurting themselves to try and make it stop.” Snow gestures to a file on the console. “The pictures are in there of the victim, if you want to look.”

Sara crosses the space, lifts the top of the file folder and tilts her head to get a better look before snatching her hand back and looking quickly up at Len. He meets her gaze and doesn’t move away as she walks over to him and grabs his face with strong hands, tilting it from side to side. She turns his face forward again and she’s staring at him with a hard look.

“What happened?” She asks softly and fiercely but he knows she isn’t asking him.

“We were testing the rules and limits of the…curse. We needed to see what happened if he _didn’t_ tell the truth,” Barry says, delicately with guilt clear in his voice. Len doesn’t look away from Sara, but she still shakes him a little.

“Goddammit, Leonard,” she says gently and he looks down and away. She holds his face for a few more seconds before she squeezes his cheeks, making his lips purse out and he pulls away with a grunt, but he recognizes her attempt to make this less serious.

She turns to look at the teams while Len moves his eyes to look at the wall behind all of them.

Across the room, Ray and Zari have their heads ducked together over the file folder, whispering and pointing at it together.

“Well, I can confidently say that the Legends are here to help,” Sara says, a slightly mean smile on her face that Len knows does not bode well for Ms. Jacobs.

He’s sort of excited for their next showdown now.

 

The teams take the time to catch up before any planning starts, getting comfortable together again. Len stands off to the side, watching as Nate laughs at something Zari says that gets Caitlin to smile. Ray and Cisco are suspiciously close, Ray’s head tucked down to talk quietly and Len glares.

He’s about to grab Ray by his shirt and take his damn phone when Barry walks in from where he went to go grab something to eat. He’s munching on what looks like an energy bar and the way Barry looks at their teams interacting, the slight smile on his face as he chews, makes Len remember a very important difference between their teams.

Before Barry can make it back to the circle of teammates, Len strides over. He grabs Barry’s arm and keeps walking, and Barry’s muffled noise of surprise makes Len’s lip twitch up slightly. He keeps dragging a stumbling Barry behind him until he gets out into the hallway. He lets go of Barry’s arm before pressing Barry back against the wall with one finger against his chest.

Len drops his hand, takes a step back, and thinks about how to navigate the curse in order to say what he wants to and no more. Barry swallows his mouthful of the energy bar—making Len glance down at the way his throat bobs, of course—and looks like he’s about to talk, so Len raises a hand, signaling him to wait.

Finally, he sighs and shoves his hands into his jacket pockets.

“Our teams are very different,” he starts, haltingly, making Barry raise an eyebrow.

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Len glares at him and Barry sucks in his lips as if to show that he won’t interrupt again as his eyes dance in amusement. Len has to bite his lip to keep from saying something stupid and entirely too truthful.

“Our teams are different. For a lot of reasons. We have an assassin,” he says, waving in the direction of the cortex, “you guys have a bunch of nerds.”

Barry gets the most offended look on his face that Len’s ever seen and it takes everything he has to not laugh.

Damn, he wished he could get Gideon to take a picture of _that_.

“You can’t say shit, Len. You have a _historian_ , of all things,” he says and points aggressively at Len. “And I’d argue and say that Ray is a bigger nerd than all of Team Flash combined.”

Len tilts his head in consideration and concedes the point.

“You’re right,” Len admits before sighing and pursing his lips in annoyance as Barry looks like Christmas came early. “Shut up. What I’m trying to say is that we…hurt people, Barry.”

Barry’s eyebrows scrunch together slightly and he shakes his head a little in confusion.

“Yeah, Len, so do we. You’ve definitely gotten enough bruises from me to know that,” Barry says in a voice that says he’s trying to joke but his face betrays him. Barry and his damn bleeding heart don’t like hurting people.

Not even people who’ve kidnapped their friends and betrayed them.

“Plus, I worked with the Legends during the whole Dominator thing,” he says with a slight wave of his hand. “I’ve seen you guys in action.”

Len shakes his head and takes a step closer to Barry; not close enough to touch but just enough to be taken seriously.

“I want you to think about the kind of people that make up my team, Barry. Not who they are, but what they _do_.” Barry looks reflexively towards the cortex as if trying to see the Legends through the wall. “Sara’s an _assassin._ Ray shoots lasers and Nate’s made of steel.” He pauses and pulls his hands from his pockets. “Mick lights people on fire and I freeze them,” he says, roughly.

Barry is looking at him, eyebrows furrowed as he’s putting together what Len is trying to say.

God, he doesn’t want to say it out loud, not now, not when there would be no way for Barry to doubt what he says.

He feels himself tense up when he sees Barry’s jaw clench, face closing off right before Len’s eyes.

“You kill people,” Barry says quietly, seriously. Len searches his eyes for any hint of what Barry’s thinking and finds nothing. He nods.

“The minute Mick and I walked onto the Waverider, our deal was off.” Barry scoffs and rubs his face before turning his head to look down the hall. “I know you’re not naive enough to think that we weren’t going on a mission to kill people, Barry.” Barry shakes his head and crosses his arms.

“I guess I never really thought about it. I knew you guys were going after Savage and of course, I knew how that would go, what you guys had to do. But past that?” Barry sighs and slumps against the wall, looking sad.

“We’ve had to do a lot of big time saving missions. There’s no place for us to throw immortals or a hundred different henchmen in jail. We can’t risk time just because we’re squeamish. Barry,” Len says, getting Barry to look at him. “There are some people that _have_ to die. You know this.”

Barry’s frown goes slightly wobbly at the corners before he gives a wet laugh.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just wish—“ Barry cuts himself off with a huff.

“You wish there was a different way? So do we, Barry. None of us _want_ to be killers. We avoid it when we can, when it might be the easiest solution but not the _only_ one.”

Barry looks at him for a long time and Len lets him, before he gets a strange look on his face that Len doesn’t know how to interpret.

Then, smoothly but slow enough not to startle Len, Barry moves forward and wraps his arms around Len’s shoulders. He’s so close, his chest pressed against Len’s and he ignores the way Len stiffens in surprise. It takes a couple of seconds, but Len finally raises his arms and wrap them gently around Barry’s back, determined not to grab and hold him close like Len really wants to.

Barry has his chin tucked in the curve of where Len’s neck meets his shoulder and he’s so close that Len can feel his hummingbird pulse. He finally relaxes enough to let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“I’m proud of you,” Barry says, delicately like he knows how much weight that that one statement has. Len breathes in the scent of ozone, of shampoo and windblown hair once before clearing his throat and taking a step back. He drops his arms, knowing that if he didn’t let go immediately he might grab Barry’s shirt at the last second and tug him back in.

He shivers at the feeling of Barry’s hands dragging across his shoulders.

Len hear’s the footsteps a second or two before Barry, so he has enough time to take a step back before Iris comes around the corner. Barry follows where Len looks and his face lights up and waves her over.

“Iris! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” Len swallows at Barry’s enthusiasm but makes sure to keep his face blank when she gets closer. Barry puts his arm around her shoulders and she leans against his body, perfectly tucked there.

He wants to hate her, to have _someone_ to be mad at, but he can’t. He knows, better than most, that there’s no one to blame except the universe.

He can’t hate destiny or time because he made sure to destroy any control anyone had over the timeline.

So instead he's just mad at himself.

Mad at all the years they’ve known each other with almost nothing to show for them except for a barely there friendship. Mad that he was dead for so long and that they didn’t get together until after he died.

Mad at the fact that he can’t help thinking that maybe, _maybe_ , if he hadn’t died and was able to continue fighting with the Legends that _maybe_ he could have had a chance.

Mad at the stupid fucking hope in his chest that just won’t die.

Iris gives Len a smile and squeezes his arm sympathetically so he looks down his nose at her in a mock glare, making her roll her eyes.

“Don’t worry, Snart. I’m not going to ask you anything.” He smirks and sweeps an arm towards the cortex in a gesture for her and Barry to walk ahead of him.

“Much obliged, Miss West,” he says as she brushes by him and she’s short enough that Barry’s able to smile over her head at him. He raises an eyebrow but it only gets Barry to laugh softly and shake his head.

He follows them back into the cortex but heads off towards Sara who doesn’t bother glancing at him, keeping an eye on the teams.

“What was that about?” she asks out of the corner of her mouth. He sighs, but feels his throat tightening so he bends down slightly to answer her quietly.

“Just giving Flash a reminder that we’re more the ‘stab first, ask questions later’ types than his team.” She snorts and her eyes flicker up at him for a second.

“Was that all?” Her tone is sarcastic and he knows she doesn’t mean for it to be answered so he isn’t surprised when she tenses a second after, remembering that he can’t _not_ answer her.

“He told me he’s proud of me.” Her mouth is pinched, clearly upset with herself for making him admit that. She turns her head completely away from him when he continues. “Then he hugged me. Happy?”

She doesn’t apologize but she doesn’t have to. The tense line of her shoulders is an apology of it’s own.

“I don’t believe it,” Cisco says, catching all of their attention. He has Ray’s phone in his hand but he’s looking directly at Len. “Captain Cold sleeps in matching Frozen pajamas.”

 

He’s going to kill them. He’s going to fucking murder all of them.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the end of this fic, I want to ask y'all if you have a scene/chapter that you'd want to see from Barry's P.O.V. and I think I'll choose the top one or two. So keep that in mind if that's something you guys would want! You can comment here or message me on tumblr (sugar-haus.tumblr.com)  
> <3

“Don’t get too excited, shorty. Lisa bought ‘em for him.” Mick barely glances at Cisco as he talks, focusing mostly on the lighter he’s flicking on and off.

“Now that, I absolutely believe,” Cisco says with a slight uptick to the corner of his mouth and Len loves Mick a little bit.

No way was Len in a state of mind to handle answering Cisco truthfully if he had asked.

No way he could handle admitting, in front of all these assholes, that he actually bought the pajama set just to make Lisa laugh after he shot Lewis.

“Not that we’re all not intensely fascinated with Snart’s fashion choices, but I think we might have a more important, ‘Mindslaver’ type of situation,” Zari says, an impressively, dramatically fake look of interest and air quotes and all.

“I can’t believe they still have _Magic: The Gathering_ in the future,” Ray says softly to Sara, snorting lightly. Len watches as Sara tilts her head to the side and looks up at Ray with a completely blank look and he smirks as Ray stands up straighter and clears his throat.

Len catches Barry looking at him, eyebrows raised and a slight smirk on his face. He knows that Barry’s point that The Legends are bigger nerds than Team Flash was just proven very clearly and he scowls in response, making Barry’s nose scrunch up in self-satisfied amusement. Len quickly looks away but not before catching Iris’ gaze. She looks up at Barry and back to Len, her eyebrows slightly scrunched in question so Len quickly averts his eyes.

“Z is right. Fill us in on everything you have.” Sara walks over to the console and braces herself on her fists as she looks between Team Flash. Snow brings the brain scans up on the televisions along with the files on Caroline and her brother.

Len mostly tunes her out, knowing all of this information first hand and instead starts thinking about how they’re going to go after her, how they’re going to work around whoever she gets under control wherever they corner her.

And fucking Ed.

A finger hooks into the sleeve of his shirt and tugs his hand away from his face, from where he had been unconsciously scratching at the very itchy scabbing scratches on his face. He tilts his head slightly in thanks to Amaya and she smiles delicately back, brushing a hand down his arm as if to reinforce that it should stay down there at his side before removing her hand from him completely. She doesn’t move out of his space, just stops touching him and he sees more and more why Mick is so fond of her.

Before he focuses back on the conversation, he sees Amaya smirk a little and follows where she’s looking just to see Barry staring intently at Sara. He’s confused for a second before he takes in the tight lines of Barry’s shoulders and realizes that it’s not like he’d ever be fast enough to catch a speedster staring at him.

He purses his lips and forces that thought away, not liking where it would eventually lead him.

“The lightning that killed her brother gave her the ability to change the way the brain functions. She’s able to completely bypass our control centers,” Snow is saying when Len tunes back in.

“So there’s a few problems now,” Cisco continues, stepping in front of the televisions and drawing attention to himself. “She uses her powers through touch,” he ticks it off on his fingers. “We don’t know if that’s just localized to her hand, but either way it’s going to make it hard to grab her when we can’t really touch her. Secondly,” Cisco says, glancing at Len, “she’s super suspicious now. We backstabbed a criminal, who are already paranoid bastards by nature. She’s not going to be easy to trick again. And lastly…” Cisco trails off with a sigh and drops his hands.

“She knows it was us who betrayed her,” Len says lowly. Cisco presses his lips together and shrugs in affirmation. “Which means we won’t be able to get anywhere near her. At least, Mick and I won’t.” Mick curses lazily before slouching further down in the rolling chair, making it creak.

“Len, you and Rory will have to stay here after we come up with a plan. You know criminals the best, but we know she’ll be keeping an eye out for you and anyone else you know.” Barry sighs and crosses his arms, moving away from Iris as he speaks.

“Yeah, it’s not as if we don’t know what we’re doing anyway,” Nate says, scoffing. Len gives him a blank look.

“Before Zari joined the team, she tricked you all into being part of a prison break to get her brother’s amulet back.” Nate rubs the back of his neck sheepishly while Ray looks at the ceiling to avoid the incredulous looks from Team Flash.

Zari just shrugs and reaches into the bag of chips Mick holds out to her.

“So excuse me if I don’t have the utmost faith in your abilities or tact to handle a criminal that knows we’re after her.”

“We survived being in the field without you before, Leonard.” He cuts his eyes to Sara, and almost risks looking away when he hears Barry’s sharp inhale. He doesn’t though, keeps his eyes locked with Sara and the tightness of her body language and the twist of her mouth.

She’s aiming low in order to try and keep him here.

She should know by now that he’s the king of low shots and never really knew how to pull his punches. Especially now that he is forced to say _exactly_ what he thinks.

“I came back to find the hawks and Jax had left and the Professor was dead, Sara.” The cortex is dead silent, an aggressiveness to it that Len knows he’s playing with fire here. “I think _surviving_ is too strong of a word for it.”

Sara pushes off of the cortex and crosses her arms, the muscles in her forearms bulging as she clearly reigns in the urge to cross the space and lay him out. The twist of her mouth is pure anger now, and he knows he’s hit a raw nerve. Len keeps his stance loose with his hands crossed casually in front of him. He tries to make it look like his heart isn’t trying to pound its way out of his chest knowing he could very much have lost his team with just a few words.

“They did get another Snart after that though,” Cisco says, lightly but with an awkwardness to it like he’s trying to lighten the atmosphere but isn’t exactly feeling up to it.

He knows that Team Flash was close to the Professor, and he’s become extremely aware of how every set of eyes on him right now aren’t exactly _pleased_ with him.

Wait.

What?

“What?” Len grits out and finally looks away from Sara’s furious gaze to look at Cisco. Cisco, instead, is looking between Sara and Mick, concerned.

“You. You guys didn’t tell him?” Sara unfolds her arms enough to pinch the bridge of her nose, breathing evenly in through her nose and out of her mouth, clearly trying to force herself to relax.

“It hasn’t exactly come up, Cisco.” Sara finally looks back up and shakes her hair back behind her shoulders, mouth a stern line.

“ _What_ hasn’t come up. What do you mean ‘another’ Snart,” He takes a step forward, faux relaxed stance completely forgotten as his fist start to clench and his shoulders raise with tension.He moves his glare to his partner. “Mick, I swear to god if you brought Lisa on that ship I’ll fucki—“

“Relax, Snart. Jesus Christ.” Mick rolls his eyes and hands the bag of chips completely over to Zari. Despite the relaxed slouch Mick has going in the chair, he knows how Len can react and he probably wants his hands free. “I didn’t get the brat caught up in this.”

“Who’s Lisa?” He hears Nate whisper.

“Snart’s little sister,” Ray whispers back, slightly louder than Nate because god knows that man never learned how to actually whisper.

“There’s more Snarts?” Len would roll his eyes if he wasn’t trying to get himself to relax now that he knows Lisa wasn’t on the ship.

“I assume they told you about the Nazis?” Len breathes out harshly before looking over at Barry, who’s staring at him with a look that clearly says how unhappy he is with Len’s current…behavior.

“It was mentioned.” Barry turns to look at his team briefly before taking a few steps closer to Len, making him stiffen up even more.

“Well, on Earth X there were that earth’s versions of some of us. Some were good, some were bad.” Barry glances at Sara. “Some weren’t around anymore.”

He wonders briefly at how they would know who wasn’t alive in that world but decides he’d rather not know.

“But you were, Len. You were there and you saved us. Well, not,” Barry gestures vaguely as he pauses, “not _you._ Leo saved us.”

Len flinches at the name.

“He stayed with the Legends for awhile, and he helped us,” Barry puts a hand on his own chest before waving at the rest of Team Flash, “out when we really needed it.” From the slight curve of Barry’s lips, Leo did more than just shoot a few bad guys to help them.

Len lets that all sink in.

“Where is _Leo_ now?” Len asks, disgust clear in his tone but it doesn’t seem to faze Barry, who just shrugs a shoulder.

“Fighting a revolution with his husband.” Len snorts out a laugh, finding it funny that on any earth, a Leonard Snart would ever have a future like that, let alone a Leonard Snart on an earth filled with Nazis.

“Well, he sounds like he’d fit in far better with all of you.” He hates that he has to say that and that he knows everyone else is aware that it’s the truth, so he tries to make his tone as sarcastic as possible. “And I’m sure he was just as brilliant as I am. So, my point still stands. You need me out there.”

“Leonard, it’s safer for you here.”

“Like _hell_ it is! For who? Who is it safer for, hm?” Len steps to the side of Barry so he can take a threatening step towards Snow, making her take a step back immediately.

“Asshole,” Cisco hisses at him, moving closer to Len in retaliation and Len glares down his nose at him. “She knows you, she knows who you work with. She’s not going to trust anything you or Rory could possibly be a part of. She might not even be willing to come out of hiding.”

“She will. She won’t be able to resist pulling a job. And then, all it takes is one touch. You need all the help you can get.”

“It’s just one meta and her dumbass lackey, Snart,” Nate pipes up, arms folded in what Len is sure he thinks is an intimidating stance.

Len twists completely around to face him.

“You’ll need all the help you can get if she gets her hands on you. She grabs Sara or Raymond,” he waves his hand flippantly in Ray’s direction, “she’s going to make them do a hell of a lot more than tell the truth.”

Nate swallows and his eyes widen slightly and he looks away from Len towards Sara. Len feels something relax in him, thinking maybe he could get the team to change their minds after all.

“That’s not going to work, Leonard,” Sara’s voice is tight and slightly muffled as Len watches her rub a hand down her face. “This is how this is going to go.” She breathes out roughly before putting her hands together and point them at the other team. “Team Flash. Tell us what kind of plan you’ve come up with, and we’ll go from there.”

Cisco clears his throat and picks up his tablet.

“Well,” he says, twirling his stylus, “with Rory and Snart here, they can talk us through what to do and what to say to her and Ed.” Len growls, making Cisco stop.

“You’re not getting me to just sit here,” he says, scowling at them.

“Leonard," Sara snaps harshly. “Listen for once in your damn life, would you?” He bares his teeth at her in what could very, _very_ loosely be called a smile.

“Yes, dear.” She rolls her eyes at him and flings her hands up in exasperation.

He lives to please.

“As I was _saying,_ ” Cisco says, glaring at Len who only raises an eyebrow in response. Barry looks like he’s at the very edge of his patience and Len would feel bad about being the cause of it, but honestly? It’s fun to have someone else be involved in the Legends’ assholish ways. “We won’t plan a heist or anything. That would be too obvious. New faces in Central, looking for a crew? Right after Captain Cold and Heatwave betrayed her? She’s going to see right through that.

“I’ll keep searching the cameras for where she went, but I don’t think we’re going to find her until she comes out. Which means,” Cisco draws out the word, “we wait. We wait until we get the alarm that she’s struck again. Barry will run all of you guys over, and we’ll get her once she tries to make her escape.”

There’s a long silence as the teams think it over, and while Cisco looks at them expectantly, they all start to look like they agree.

“That’s a shit plan and it’s not going to work,” he has to say. Both because it’s the truth and because, well. It’s the truth.

“Then you come up with a better one, jackass,” Cisco says, looking like he’s seconds away from throwing the tablet at Len’s head.

“Well, that’s clearly not _my_ job.”

“Then why the hell are you even here, Snart?” Barry sounds tired as he rubs at his forehead, head tilted down and eyes closed.

Len wants to laugh because he could say a lot of things to that. He _wants_ to say a lot of things to that. He’s here because he can’t let something like this happen in his city. Because he wants to be the most dangerous thing here. Because he likes the fight. Because he’s good at this. Because he’s a _big damn hero_ now. Because this meta is forcing people to do things they don't want to do. Because that woman killed herself. Because of those fucking _pictures_. Because-

“Because I love you.”

 

Shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...I feel I may be getting some aggressive comments for this XD


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the end of this fic, I want to ask y'all if you have a scene/chapter that you'd want to see from Barry's P.O.V. and I think I'll choose the top one or two. So keep that in mind if that's something you guys would want! You can comment here or message me on tumblr (sugar-haus.tumblr.com)  
> <3

“Uh, what?” It’s Cisco that breaks the silence that lasts far longer than it should.

Len doesn’t answer.

He turns on his heel and walks out of the cortex.

If asked how he felt about not hearing anyone calling or walking after him, he honestly doesn’t know what he would answer. He continues out of the building.

He doesn’t remember driving back to the safe house, but he makes it without incident so that’s what’s important.

He supposes he should feel bad about leaving Mick at the Labs but he really can’t bring himself to. He’s sure one of the Legends will give him a ride.

He grabs a beer from the fridge and sits on the couch to take a long pull from it.

His chest hurts.

He realizes he isn’t exactly breathing normally.

He tries counting the seconds, breathing in and holding it before releasing the breath, nice and slow.

It helps.

His phone rings in his pocket. His breathing stops.

It starts again when he registers that it’s Lisa’s ringtone. He debates not picking up but honestly, any distraction is a welcome relief.

“Lise.”

“Lenny.” He huffs through his nose at her mimic of his dry tone but he can feel his heartbeat slowing down.

“What can I help you with?” He hopes he doesn’t sound as winded as he feels but knowing Lisa, she can probably tell.

“Well, brother dear. I was just checking in to see what spectacularly fucked up situation you got yourself into this time.” He sucks in a harsh breath through his teeth and is just grateful that it isn’t a question.

“How do you know?”

“A little bird gave me a ring.” He’s going to kill Cisco.

“Tell Cisco I’m gonna-“ he stops, his own throat closing against the empty threat. Lisa hums in response.

“Right. I’ll be sure to tell him that.” He rolls his eyes but he can feel some of the tension leave his shoulders. She’s annoying, but she’s his sister. Annoying is her default setting and, frankly, it’s comforting.

“What did Cisco tell you?” He hears her huff and the shuffle of clothing. He pictures her leaning against the island in her kitchen, the elbow of the arm that’s holding the phone planted firmly on the granite while her other hand taps out an impatient rhythm. Her default phone call stance.

“He told me that there’s a new one of those super-powered assholes running around. Said that she’s making people do things against their will. Said that you were _undercover,_ of all things.” He can hear her eye roll, the very idea of Len going ‘undercover’ in anything being somewhat laughable. “He also told me that you got yourself whammied by her. That you’re stuck _telling the truth._ ” The disgust in her tone makes him chuckle.

“Yeah, well. There are worse things, Lise.”

“Worse? Lenny, we’re criminals. All we do is lie. I caught you lying to the cashier about your preferred brand of paper towels.” Well. It’s none of their damn business what kind of paper towels he likes.

He opens his mouth to tell her that, at least, it’s temporary. The reassurance gets caught in his throat and he swallows convulsively. The need to comfort his sister is still not enough to override the fact that it’s a lie. They don’t know if it’s temporary. They don’t know how to reverse it.

They don’t know if it _can_ be reversed.

“Cisco also said that you may have officially embarrassed yourself. Probably for the first time in your life.” His breath leaves him in a whoosh. Dammit. “What could my infallible, unflappable brother have said to garner _embarrassment.”_ Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit.

Since his sister’s tone doesn’t go up, the statement doesn’t technically sound like a question. But Len’s _brain_ knows it’s a question and so the curse knows, too. He hates his life.

“I told the Flash I love him.” He expects the silence over the line. What he doesn’t expect is for the silence to last so long. No laughter, no snide comment. She’s just. Quiet. He hears a hint of static over the line so he knows she hasn’t hung up. He waits her out.

She sighs.

“Christ, Lenny.” Her voice is so soft, he can barely hear her, but her tone is unmistakable. It’s delicate and thick. Breathless in the same way that voices get when someone cares, when someone worries, but they still have to tell you _‘I’m sorry, your grandfather had a heart attack—_ “Why’d you have to go and do that to yourself?” His eyes burn slightly so he closes them. If he were a weaker man, if he were softer, there probably would be tears in his eyes. But he isn’t and he hasn’t cried in over thirty years and this isn’t going to be the thing that breaks him. He won’t fucking let it.

“I didn’t—“ his throat clicks, stopping the _do anything_ in its tracks. Because he did. He did a lot. And he didn’t do the shit he was supposed to. He didn’t leave Barry alone. He didn’t stop coming when Barry called.

He didn’t stop himself from falling in love with Barry Allen.

He lifts his beer bottle to his forehead, letting the cold soothe his pounding headache.

“Well, the good news,” she says after clearing her throat, “is that you have an amazing sister who would do anything for you. Even something that she knows you’ll be pissed at her for.” He pulls the bottle away from his head and stares at it for lack of the ability to stare at her.

“What do you-“ he’s interrupted by a knock on his door, making him whip around to stare at. “What the fuck,” he says, softly, as he pushes off of the couch and puts his beer down on the coffee table. He pulls a gun out from the drawer of a side table.

“Ah. Sounds like the ‘something’ has arrived. Just remember that I’m amazing and I only want what's best for you, bye!” The last few words are said in a rush and ends in the beeping of the phone telling him that she hung up.

Another knock distracts him from staring in shock at his phone. He moves quietly towards the door and places the gun at waist level against it. He pulls back the hammer slowly, trying to minimize the noise.

“Leonard? You there?” He startles, automatically pulling the gun away and releasing the hammer. “Cisco said that you’d be here?”

He allows himself to hiss out the forced _yes_ to the question but keeps it as quiet as possible. He wants to not open the door. He wants nothing more than to walk away and pretend he isn’t home. He hears a sigh.

“Leonard, I can see that your light is on. If you think I’m above picking my way into your apartment, you haven’t met too many journalists.” He sighs and his eyes fall shut. How is this his fucking life? He puts the safety on and moves a few steps to put the gun down on the kitchen island before going back and grabbing the door knob. It still takes him a couple of seconds, a couple of deep breaths, before he can open the door.

He yanks it open quickly. Like a band-aid.

“Miss West.” He opens his mouth to continue, to say that it’s a pleasure to see her, and normally that would the truth. He likes Iris. She’s brave and a ballbuster. His kind of woman. But, well. Post love confession to her fiancé isn’t exactly the time he wants to see her. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She crosses her arms defensively in response to his tone but then seems to force herself to relax.

“Can I come in?” Her tone doesn’t give much away, but it doesn’t seem likely that she’s going to slip a knife between his ribs so he nods and moves to the side, gesturing inwards.

“Yes. Be my guest.” He walks to the kitchen with her following behind him. “Beer?” He turns just enough to see her nod before ducking into the fridge. “Hope you don’t mind IPAs,” he says, handing her the bottle after he pops the top off. She raises an eyebrow at the gun on the counter but doesn’t say anything, instead just takes the beer from his hand.

“If it’s bougie and tastes like coffee, I’ll probably drink it.” He catches the glint in her eyes while she takes a sip and he doesn’t really know what’s happening. He hasn’t been this wrong-footed in…a very long time. To hide his confusion, he walks back to the couch and gestures for her to follow him. He picks up his beer before sitting down, further to the side than he was before. She follows his example and sits at the opposite corner, facing towards him with one of her legs tucked under her.

She took off her shoes when she came in. He hadn’t noticed.

“I’m not here to yell at you or to tell you to stay away from Barry.” She’s picking at the label on the beer bottle and won’t look up at him. He doesn’t look away from her face anyway.

“Then why are you here?” He catches himself tapping nervously on his leg. He crosses his ankle over his knee and holds it with his free hand to stop it from giving him away. She sighs and finally looks up at him.

“You’ve been forced to tell a lot of truths lately.” He tenses and thinks he knows where this is going. “So I’ve decided to come and tell _you_ a few truths.” Okay, no he doesn’t. What?

“What?” She laughs slightly, a nice soft noise.

“I wanted to even the playing field a little. Being forced to tell the absolute truth wouldn’t be fun for anyone, but.” She stops and picks at the label again before forcing her eyes back up. “I understand how hard it is, _especially_ for you. You’ve had to say things you never would have and never should have had to. So.” She tilts sideways and reaches to put down the beer on the coffee table before straightening again. She puts her hands in her lap, the perfect picture of studiousness. “Ask anything.”

He swallows and can feel his hand tighten around the beer bottle.

At this moment, he can see everything about Iris that Barry loves.

It makes his chest hurt so bad, he would think that this is what dying is like if he hadn’t died once already.


End file.
